Double-Edged Sword
by Irhista Lhail
Summary: Speculative, between-the-scenes Kensuke story for Digimon Zero Two. Contains some fluff, some angst, and some downright weirdness. NEW CHAPTER as of 08 March 01 -
1. Chapter One - Guilt (Daisuke)

Daisuke stood outside the door, dithering. He'd been standing there for about ten minutes now, trying to bring himself to knock on the door in front of him. Every now and then, he'd raise his hand to knock, and then chicken out before he could actually touch it, resuming his nervous fidgeting. Chibimon, held in the crook of one arm, had been dozing for most of the trip over here, but had woken up and was now starting to fidget also.

"Maybe I should just go," muttered Daisuke to himself. Chibimon stirred and looked up at him.

"And waste a trip over here?" said the little Digimon. "If you were planning on doing that, why couldn't we have stayed home, or gone to see Gatomon?"

"Well, I wasn't planning on it being this tough!" Daisuke kicked at the floor with one sneaker. "This is really hard. This is probably the hardest thing I've ever had to do. I gave myself too much time to think about this, if I'd just rushed into it, it wouldn't be this difficult."

"Don't be silly, Daisuke. It's easy! Watch!" Chibimon leaned over, almost out of Daisuke's grasp, and quickly rapped on the door with his paw. Daisuke pulled him back, but it was too late to stop him. Resuming his comfortable position in Daisuke's arms, Chibimon went back to pretending to be inanimate. A moment later, the door opened.

The woman's face that peered out seemed angry for just a moment. Or, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that she was prepared to be angry. Her expression cleared when she saw that it was just Daisuke, and the smile she offered was a little strained, but genuine.

"Can I help you?"

"Um, yeah," said Daisuke, uncomfortable and scratching his head to hide it. "Is this where Ichijouji Ken lives?"

The woman nodded. "Yes." She hesitated a moment, and then said in a slightly more excited tone, "Are you one of his friends?"

Was it unusual for Ken's friends to come over to visit? Daisuke didn't inquire. "Yeah. One of his friends. Is he home?"

"Yes, he's home. Come in. What a cute toy! I'll go check if he's up to seeing you, what's your name?"

"Motomiya Daisuke." Kicking off his shoes, Daisuke entered the apartment. Chibimon squirmed slightly in his arms, moving to a more comfortable position, but Mrs. Ichijouji was already on her way into the rear hallway, while Mr. Ichijouji was hidden behind a newspaper.

Soft door-knocking sounded from the rear of the apartment, followed by equally soft voices. Daisuke attempted to ignore this, looking around the apartment as if interested in the decorations.

"You're one of Ken's friends?" said Mr. Ichijouji suddenly.

"Yeah."

"Are you on his soccer team?"

"No," said Daisuke. "I go to Odaiba Elementary." There was an uncomfortable silence then, and the newspaper rattled a little as Mr. Ichijouji peered at him around the edge. Daisuke sensed that further explanation was required, and he had to think fast to make up a plausible lie about how he knew Ken. "My team played Ken's a few months ago. We practiced together some and emailed each other for awhile before he disappeared. I heard on the news that he was back home, so I figured I'd come see how he was doing." There, that sounded ... almost plausible. It was good enough for Mr. Ichijouji anyway. He went back to reading his newspaper.

Movement in the rear hallway. Ken looked around the corner into the room, his mother hovering behind. Daisuke felt Chibimon stiffen slightly, and he couldn't help stiffening himself, although he wasn't afraid of Ken. Not here in the real world anyway. He was simply surprised at how rough Ken looked.

Gone was the self-assured young man he'd faced in the fateful soccer match, beautiful and brilliant. Gone as well was the arrogant Digimon Kaizer. This Ken was pale, exceptionally so, and dark smudges marked the flesh under his eyes; he looked like he hadn't eaten or slept at all since the last time Daisuke had seen him, out in the desert next to the wreckage of the flying base. Yet this couldn't have been true. The dark blue eyes held a haunted quality, an indefinable, inarticulate pain that bled into the blue like a raw wound.

Ken stared blankly for a moment, and then his gaze dropped, first to Chibimon, then to the D-3 peeking out of Daisuke's pocket. He sounded deathly tired when he finally spoke.

"You're not planning on using that, are you?"

Daisuke shook his head. "No, I just came over to talk. You know, see how you've been."

Another moment of blank stare. Daisuke was starting to become uncomfortable again. This sort of behavior would have been alarming in anyone, but to see Ken reduced to this was especially disturbing. When the moment passed, Ken waved invitingly.

"Come on back."

Mrs. Ichijouji exchanged places with Daisuke, and he could hear her low voice in the front room as he followed Ken back to his bedroom. What she said was too low to hear, but Mr. Ichijouji's reply wasn't. "Just leave them alone. A friend is probably just what he needs."

Ken held the door politely open for Daisuke. Ken's room was very much like Ken himself, dark and closed-in, neatly ordered, and with the computer on its desk placed very prominently along one wall. When the door shut behind Daisuke, something moved up on the bed.

Wormmon's dark face peeked out over the covers. "Oooh, he really did come."

"Yes, he really did," said Ken. "Put your Digimon down, Daisuke. He and Wormmon can play or something. I'm sure Wormmon is tired of my company by now."

Wormmon slid down the bed's ladder with expert ease, wiggling over to snuggle Ken's ankle. "That's not true, Ken. I don't need anyone's company, except yours."

Crouching down, Ken stroked Wormmon's head. Daisuke couldn't quite shake the impression that he was looking at a completely different person from the Ken he'd known before. This wasn't just a change of heart, it was like Ken had swapped out his cruel Kaizer soul for a new one, one that had been slashed first with razor blades.

"I'm sorry, I know," Ken was saying. "But you'd like to play with Chibimon, wouldn't you?"

Wormmon agreed with this, and Chibimon had no objections, so Daisuke set his Digimon on the floor. The two Digimon soon settled down into a corner, chatting with each other like old friends in low tones that didn't disturb their human partners.

Daisuke took a moment to envy the effortless way Chibimon made friends with Wormmon, wishing it were that easy for him. He scratched his head and said, "So, uh, Ken. How have you been?" He suppressed a wince. How lame he sounded.

Ken pretended he hadn't heard. "Have a seat," he said. Daisuke looked around, and found that the computer chair was the only place to sit aside from the floor and the bed. He sank down into it. Ken kneeled down on the floor across from him, looking upward at him with shadowed blue eyes. Daisuke suppressed another wince, wishing he'd sat down on the floor also. Ken's eyes were beautiful, looking up at him, slightly wistful and filled with that inexpressible pain. Well, too late now.

He was attempting to think of another, undoubtedly equally lame thing to say when Ken saved him the effort. "I'm sorry, Daisuke."

Daisuke opened his mouth, something along the lines of "That's all right, don't worry about it" prepared to fly off his tongue. Insincere words, words he didn't mean. It _wasn't_ all right. The things Ken had done were horrible. Ken interrupted the meaningless lie, saving Daisuke again.

"No, don't say anything. Hear me out." Ken looked up at him again, his eyes so dark a blue it was as if a little piece of the twilight sky had come to dwell there. "I had my reasons for what I did. They weren't very good reasons, though, and they don't even come close to excusing my actions. So I'm not going to bother asking you to understand. I can't ask you to forgive me, either. The Digimon don't, except for Wormmon, and he can't help himself. But I want you to know that I'm sorry."

"It was something to do with a brother, wasn't it?" said Daisuke. "You said something about that just before you left."

Ken nodded once, a sharp, controlled movement. "Something like that. I wasn't myself, I was babbling."

Hesitating a moment, Daisuke heard Chibimon's delighted giggle. He looked at the two Digimon, who were playing tag or something now. Chibimon had just pounced on Wormmon's back, and as Daisuke watched, the smaller Digimon leaped off and scrambled up onto the bed. Wormmon quickly followed though, hunting for Chibimon's hiding place among Ken's sheets. There were more giggles when Chibimon was found, and the two began to wrestle.

He looked back over at Ken, only to find the other boy also watching the Digimon, a faint smile on his face and something infinitely sad pushing the pain momentarily out his eyes. Daisuke wished one of the girls had come with him. He wasn't good at this talking thing.

"Um," he said, and then pondered what it was about him that made such stupid things come out of his mouth. He tried again. "Um, you want to talk about it?"

Ken's dark eyes found him again. "Why? Why would you care?" Harsh words, but they contained no malice. Ken's voice was soft, wondering.

Encouraged, Daisuke said, "Well, you know. Hikari says that sometimes it helps to talk things out. Taichi and Yamato say things work out better when you beat each other up, but I'm not in a beat-up-Ken mood today, and I'd kinda prefer if you didn't hit me."

The corner of Ken's lip twitched. "You're trying to make me feel better?"

"Well ... yeah." Daisuke shifted in his seat, then slid off it onto the floor. He couldn't stand looking down at Ken anymore. "I mean, you were pretty broken up when we last saw you. And I don't care what you think, you _are_ Digi-Destined, just like the rest of us. I have a responsibility to my team." He grinned a little, but Ken did not seem to find this amusing.

"Yeah. Yeah, I was in bad shape. I'd just watched Wormmon die." He looked up at where Wormmon was stalking Chibimon around the pillows. "You didn't seem surprised to see him when you came in."

"I wasn't. Digimon never really die, I figured he'd been reborn and you'd found him again. I'm glad you did, by the way. If you'd come with us when I asked you to, we would have helped you find his Digi-egg."

"Really?" A shadow crossed Ken's features, but was gone again almost before Daisuke registered its presence. "That would have been ... nice ... of you." He was silent a moment before saying, "I thought I knew everything there was to know about the digital world. And it turns out I didn't know anything."

"I wouldn't say that."

Ken glanced over at him. "All of the important points seemed to have gone over my head. If I were playing a game on my Playstation, I wouldn't worry about whether or not I hurt the monsters in it. You wouldn't either. I never realized ..." His voice broke, and he trailed off into silence, turning to look at the wall so that Daisuke couldn't see his face. His shoulders trembled.

Wormmon and Chibimon had ceased their game and were peering over the edge of the bed at Daisuke. He gave Chibimon a "What?!?" look, but the little creature just gestured with one paw. Daisuke didn't read Digimon sign language, so he had to take a guess that Chibimon wanted him to comfort Ken somehow. Perfect. If someone had told him a week ago that he'd be trying to comfort the Kaizer today, he would have laughed in that person's face.

Meanwhile, Wormmon had slipped down the bed post again and was approaching Ken at a slow crawl. But at the last second, Wormmon backed away, gave Daisuke a soulful look, and then silently hid under the desk. It broke Daisuke's heart to see it - Wormmon was still afraid of Ken's moods.

"Look, um ..." he began, unsure of what was really expected of him here. "It wasn't your fault." It wasn't? No, it wasn't. Daisuke concluded on the spot that it wasn't.

"It was," sobbed Ken. "I did it all. Nobody made me do it, I wanted to _win."_ Ken's head fell against the wall as he curled into a small, huddling ball. "Wormmon tried to tell me, you bunch tried to tell me, I wouldn't _listen."_

"Well, it is kind of unbelievable. I didn't believe it myself at first. I know you're not stupid, Ken, but I get the idea that you don't have a very active imagination. And you didn't have any of the old Digi-Destined with you, like we did. You would have figured things out sooner if someone had been with you, or if you had more imagination."

"Living beings," said Ken, as if he hadn't heard any of that. "Thousands of them, living beings that I forced to work for me, fight for me." Ken turned his head, his shadowed eyes, bright now with tears, finding Daisuke. "Thousands of living beings that I _tortured,_ that I _killed._ My god, Daisuke ... the things I've done ..."

"Well, they didn't really die."

Shaking his head and wiping his face, Ken said, "That doesn't matter. I met some of them when I found Wormmon again. They ... they won't ever forgive me, and I don't blame them."

Awkwardly, Daisuke patted Ken on the shoulder. "You just have to make up for it somehow."

Ken's voice broke again. He looked down, saying in a hoarse whisper, "I - I can't."

"Sure you can. Come with us the next time we go there."

"There's nothing I can do. There's nothing I could possibly do that would make up for this, or even a part of it. I'm so very, very sorry, but the Digimon will never forgive me. The rest of you will never forgive me. I'm a m-monster."

Chibimon was on the floor now, sounding out Wormmon in his hiding place beneath the desk. Apparently, the signs were favorable, because Chibimon crept under the desk also. Watching this, Daisuke said, "I forgive you, Ken."

Daisuke offered this with the intent to soothe Ken's conscience somewhat. He'd never dreamed that the Kaizer actually _had_ a conscience, but it seemed that he did after all, and even Daisuke could see that the weight of Ken's crimes was slowly crushing him. Daisuke genuinely believed that Ken would never have done the things he'd done if he'd only realized that the game was not really a game. From this belief, it was a simple enough step to forgiveness, so Daisuke offered it.

The strength of Ken's reaction surprised him, though. Forgiveness was such an easy to thing to offer, something Ken seemed to need so badly. Ken stared at him for a half second, then slowly collapsed against him, sobbing again into Daisuke's shoulder. There was another awkward moment before Daisuke figured out that he ought to give Ken a hug here, and even then it was a half-hearted sort of thing at first. Ken clung to him, shaking and dampening down the fabric of his jacket, while Daisuke pondered how very much more appropriate it would have been for one of the girls to have come to talk to Ken. He'd said something wrong, that was obvious because Ken was having another breakdown. Hikari, for instance, she would have known exactly what to say to cheer Ken up, and this wouldn't be happening. Coming here had been a stupid idea, a typically Daisuke idea.

Ken seemed to be calming down, anyway. He was still clinging to Daisuke, although Daisuke wasn't sure he really wanted to change this. He'd grown comfortable holding onto Ken, closing those haunted blue eyes against his shoulder so that he didn't have to look at the pain in them. Ken was slender and warm, and needed him right now. Once Daisuke's awkward moment of uncertainty had passed, he was comfortable, and he would regret it when Ken finally pulled away and pretended that this had never happened.

As the shaking, wracking sobs ceased, Ken's head moved against Daisuke's shoulder. Daisuke loosened his grip, preparing to let Ken go, but the other boy didn't seem inclined to draw away just yet. Instead, he remained there in Daisuke's arms, turning so that his cheek rested on Daisuke's shoulder and his lips were scant millimeters from Daisuke's neck.

"How can you forgive me?" Ken whispered. His breath stirred across Daisuke's skin, raising the hairs on the back of his neck. "After what I did ... Daisuke, it burns."

For once in his life, Daisuke decided to think his answer through before opening his mouth. "You didn't know what you were doing," he said finally. "You weren't really trying to kill us. You weren't really trying to make Digimon suffer. You didn't know that what you were doing was hurting real beings. You didn't know that we could really get killed there." Daisuke paused, and then said in a deliberately light tone, "You _didn't_ know we could really get killed, right?"

"No," whispered Ken, and his breath sent a shiver down Daisuke's spine. "I would never have attacked you if I'd known you could get hurt for real."

Daisuke froze, stunned, as Ken closed the miniscule gap between lips and throat. Soft kisses, feather-light, brushed the side of his neck. What was this? He thought he'd concealed his attraction, buried it deeply enough in the rubble of hatred and loathing that Ken should never have noticed. Did he screw even that up? He had to admit it to himself now, why he'd come to talk to Ken rather than asking one of the girls to do it for him. Ken's flawless confidence, his almost frightening intelligence, and yes, even the power he had wielded so efficiently, so ruthlessly as the Kaizer ... Ken was everything that Daisuke was not. It was a difference that might have sent Daisuke into a fit of blind jealousy. It didn't.

And seeing Ken, admirable Ken, screaming out in rage and pain and anguish and frustration - all things that Daisuke could understand perfectly - was too much to bear. Seeing Ken on his hands and knees before his enemies, tearing out his hair in horror at what he'd become, reliving some nightmare from his past, was even worse. No one should have witnessed that. No one should have had to witness that.

Daisuke admitted to himself that he couldn't have sent anyone to Ken. He'd had to come himself, so that if Ken were still fragile, still shattered inside, only Daisuke would see it. No one else would have to know. Even if that meant that Daisuke screwed things up in typical Daisuke fashion, the wounds in Ken's soul would remain a secret. He cared for Ken too much to allow the world to poke careless fingers into those wounds.

The soft kisses grew hesitant. Daisuke would have slapped himself if both hands hadn't been occupied with holding Ken. He'd sat here, frozen with shock, for too long, and Ken was taking his unresponsiveness for a rejection. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

So Daisuke slipped a hand up into Ken's beautiful hair, holding him closer, letting him know that he wasn't being rejected. And that was the moment when he lost control of the situation.

Sitting up slightly, so that Daisuke was no longer supporting most of his weight, Ken parted his lips and began to kiss in earnest. Daisuke gasped aloud, suddenly unable to fully catalogue the sensations running down the side of his neck. Ken's teeth and tongue seemed to separate out every individual nerve and give it a unique signal. From the angle of Daisuke's jaw to the soft hollow at his collarbone, Ken kissed, licked, raked his teeth, nipped, stroked, and did a thousand other things that Daisuke couldn't have named. He would have fallen backward to the floor, but Ken caught him and lowered him gently, so that he was suddenly conscious of being flat on his back with Ken kneeling over him. One of Ken's hands on his throat prevented any escape from the overwhelming feelings, and all Daisuke could do was hold Ken's head to his neck and try not to moan.

His breath coming in short gasps, Daisuke opened his eyes to look up at Ken's face not far away, not quite sure when Ken had stopped. He would have said something, but Ken laid a finger on his lips. The pain in Ken's eyes had not diminished; if anything, it was greater now than before. A dull ache twisted at Daisuke's heart at the sight of it. He lipped weakly at Ken's finger, and Ken responded by turning Daisuke's head to one side, and by lowering his mouth to Daisuke's ear.

"Shhhhh," he whispered, almost no sound at all. Daisuke's breath caught in his throat when he felt Ken's tongue lightly tease his earlobe. That velvety tongue then traced the outlines of Daisuke's ear, gentle teeth nipped, and all the while, the breath of Ken's life moved over Daisuke's skin.

Daisuke gradually became aware that his entire body was twitching, convulsing as if electrified. At every touch, little spasms jerked his limbs, and he couldn't have said why. Only that it felt wonderful, as if Ken's lips were brushing all over him, and not just a single ear. The rasp of his clothes over his skin was suddenly maddening; he wished he could sink right into Ken, as he might sink into water, with nothing between them.

He shoved both hands into Ken's hair and clenched his fists, forcing Ken's head up so that he could crush their lips together. A soft sound came out of the back of Ken's throat, like a whimper, and Daisuke distantly knew that he must be hurting Ken, yanking his hair like that. Yet Ken offered no objection or protest aside from that small sound, and such was Daisuke's loss of control that he gave the matter no thought whatsoever.

Ken allowed himself to be kissed, and Daisuke ran his tongue over his lover's mouth, exploring the shape and smoothness of the teeth, the velvet of that questing tongue, the flower petals of Ken's lips. Supporting himself above Daisuke with one hand, Ken trailed the fingers of the other over Daisuke's neck and throat, and then lightly down his chest to the gap between shirt and shorts. Each delicate touch sent a new thrill through Daisuke. So gentle, Ken's touch. So gentle ...

Daisuke's fingers slowly unclenched, and he released Ken's hair. He opened his eyes a crack as Ken slid a hand up under his shirt, stroking over his skin and bringing a gasp to his throat. Ken, his beautiful hair ruffled and askew by rough treatment, was looking down at him, the shadows so deep in his eyes that they almost appeared black. Daisuke blinked to clear his vision. As before, the pain in those eyes had intensified, until it seemed impossible that it wouldn't overwhelm Ken altogether.

Daisuke wondered if it hadn't already.

He sat up suddenly, surprising Ken so that they got tangled together in Daisuke's jacket. Daisuke wrapped his arms around Ken, holding him tightly, whispering, "I'm sorry ... I'm sorry ..."

How many kinds of idiot was he? Emotionally raw, strung out, wrung out, and worn out, Ken was ripe to be taken advantage of, and that's exactly what Daisuke had been doing. But it wasn't right, it wasn't fair to Ken, and it would hurt him. It _had been_ hurting him. But he wanted it, argued another voice. He started it, he kissed you, not the other way around. While this was true, Daisuke silenced the unkind voice with the observation that sometimes people lost control. Ken wasn't stupid, he had known what was happening, even though he may have been unable to stop it. To stop himself. It was therefore up to Daisuke to stop it.

So he held Ken close, and smoothed down the savaged hair, and apologized over and over. If Daisuke had been able to find the words, he would have said all the things that roiled around in his mind, the things that would prove to Ken that he was understood. But Daisuke wasn't a sensitive, intelligent boy like Ken, so the words eluded him, leaving him with simply, "I'm sorry."

Ken was still and silent for a long time. Then he said softly, "You haven't done anything wrong."

Daisuke murmured into the top of Ken's hair, "I almost did. I'm so sorry."

"Thank you," said Ken, in the smallest, most broken voice imaginable. "God, Daisuke ... I want you so bad. This isn't me. Who is this?"

"I don't know. Maybe it is you after all. I'll help you figure it out if I can, but don't hold your breath. I'm not as smart as you are. But whatever happens, when you know, come see me again, okay?" He smiled into Ken's hair. "It's going to kill me if you decide I'm not good enough for you."

Ken sobbed. "Too good for me ... too good for me ... there's so much blood on my hands ..."

"But I forgive you. And Wormmon forgives you. And I bet even Chibimon forgives you." Shifting a little, Daisuke searched around for his little friend. He was a bit surprised to see Chibimon and Wormmon staring at him from under the desk, but then again, on reflection, maybe that wasn't so surprising, considering what he and Ken had just been doing. "Isn't that right, Chibi?"

"Whatever you say!"

Ken laughed a little, muffling the sound in Daisuke's jacket. Daisuke smiled and stroked Ken's hair. Chibimon was irrepressible.

"So there you go, that's three people who forgive you, and two of them are those Digimon that you say will never forgive you. It's a start, Ken."

"Yeah."

With slow movements, Ken disengaged his arm from Daisuke's jacket, and then drew back out of Daisuke's embrace. Daisuke let him go without comment, and watched while Ken rearranged his clothing and hair, wiped his cheeks clean of salt, attempted to resume that immaculate, unflappable mask that was so familiar to Daisuke. It was comforting to see the mask come back on, even if it was an imperfect copy. It was far preferable to the blank, zombie stare that he'd gotten from Ken when he first arrived.

Daisuke then suffered Ken to straighten out his own hair and clothes. He checked in Ken's mirror to make sure that nothing overt had appeared on his neck, and was reassured to see nothing more than a mild flush under the skin. While Ken brushed carpet fuzz off his back, he said, "Are you going to come with us when we go to the digital world next?"

"I don't think so."

"Why not?"

Ken's brushing hand went still. "The others may not forgive me yet. And maybe I don't need their forgiveness, but it wouldn't help your group any to cause a split in your team."

"You're Digi-Destined though. You can't just avoid it."

"I'm not going to avoid it, Daisuke." Ken's voice was very quiet. "But I'll do what I can to help out the digital world without getting in your way. Just me and Wormmon. We make a good team ourselves, don't you think?" He looked down, and smiled sadly at the green Digimon, who had emerged from hiding and was again clinging to his ankle.

"You're all I ever needed, Ken," said Wormmon agreeably.

Ken stooped to pick up Wormmon, and held him close. He said softly, "I was cruel to a lot of Digimon, but I think it was worst on Wormmon."

"It was all worth it," said Wormmon. "I have you now, and that's all that matters." The little Digimon closed his eyes, content.

Feeling awkward again, Daisuke said, "Well, if you need any help or something, give me a yell or an email or something. Okay?" Damn, he'd reverted to Open Mouth Say Something Stupid mode.

Ken didn't seem to mind, however. "I will. Thank you, Daisuke."

"Hey, no problem." He grinned, and was rewarded with a small smile from Ken, one with almost no grief in it at all. "I've still got some errands to run for my mom, so I should get going."

Ken nodded, and picked up Chibimon, who didn't seem to mind being nabbed by the Digimon Kaizer, as long as it was for the purpose of being handed over to Daisuke. He settled comfortably into Daisuke's arms, not sleepy again yet, but not hyper either.

Following Ken out toward the front door, Daisuke prayed that nothing would give away to Ken's parents what they'd almost done. This prayer, at least, seemed to be answered favorably; Mrs. Ichijouji was all pleased smiles and said that Daisuke was welcome back over any time, while Mr. Ichijouji continued to read his newspaper without looking up. Daisuke said goodbye to Ken, took his shoes, and went out the door.

Daisuke was standing just outside the closed apartment door, stamping his sneakers back on, when he heard the voice of Mr. Ichijouji say loudly, "Yes, Ken does seem a little better, now that you mention it. I just wish he and his friends weren't so attached to their toys. Where'd that green caterpillar thing come from, anyway?"


	2. Chapter Two - Sacrifice (Ken)

Author's Note : This is a semi-sequel to my earlier story "Guilt". It takes place concurrently with the latter part of "Armor Ankylomon of the Earth/If I Had a Tail Hammer", so expect spoilers if you happened to miss that one. You have been warned.

--Irhista Scetare Lhail

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It still smelled the way it always had. That, more than anything else, grounded him in the un-reality that was the digital world. The place had a distinctive scent to it, faint and not unpleasant, yet disturbing because it could not be defined as being _like_ anything else. Neither floral, nor spicy, nor earthy, nor dusty, nor musty, nor musky. It did not resemble the scent of any type of fruit or meat, nor did it smell like evergreen, or ozone, or water. Having eliminated every scent that it was _not_ like, he was left with nothing to compare it against. It was unique, and he knew that much later in his life, when this was all just a memory, he would be able to catch a whiff of something undefined and say, _This reminds me of the scent of the digital world._

Passing through the Digiport was always disorienting, so he took a moment to breathe in the scent of the digital world. _The world that I would have ruled._ He shoved that thought aside, although it was more difficult here than it was in the real world. Casting a glance upward, he scanned through his mind for a reason for this, and after a few seconds he arrived at a working theory. He'd learned how to sub-divide his personality, separating Ken Ichijouji from the Digimon Kaizer. The Kaizer didn't need Ken's problems distracting him while he was attempting to conquer the digital world. Ken didn't need the Kaizer's plans distracting him while he was trying to concentrate on his schoolwork. For longer than he cared to think about, he'd effectively been two people, leaving the concerns of one behind and picking up the concerns of the other every time he stepped through the Digiport, doing it so often it became an automatic, unconscious switch. The presence or absence of the distinctive scent of the digital world had been one of the things that triggered the alteration. It was a habit that had been difficult to form, and he had no doubt that it would be difficult to break.

Well, no matter. Difficulty had never stopped him before, and now that he knew the cause of the problem, it would be easier to obliterate it. He also knew where he was now. He was in the forest on File Island, the one that surrounded Primary Village. He finished orienting himself and checked around for Wormmon. The little Digimon was located behind him, and slightly to his left.

"You okay back there?" he asked. It was Ken that said this, although the Kaizer made the words harder to say than they had to be. One of the things he was accustomed to doing while in his Kaizer persona was ignoring or abusing the loyal little creature that followed him everywhere. But Wormmon only followed the Kaizer around; Ken never saw him, since he had always passed through the Digiport alone. Like the strange scent, he decided, the presence or absence of Wormmon was one of the things that triggered the switch. Drat. He catalogued this as another difficulty, and decided to do something about it right now.

"I'm fine," said Wormmon. "I'm just glad to be OOF!" All of the breath went out of the Digimon as his master picked him up. The Kaizer had never picked Wormmon up, or carried him around. He'd sometimes been annoyed that Wormmon was so slow; ever since he'd started to get tall, his creeping Digimon had been unable to keep up with his lengthening strides. So he'd yelled at Wormmon, classified this as yet more indication of Wormmon's uselessness, and occasionally given the creature a measured kick to skid him quickly across the floor. But the Kaizer had never bothered to pick Wormmon up and carry him along, so Ken did exactly that. Cradling Wormmon in his arm felt highly unnatural to the Kaizer, and Ken knew immediately that he'd done the right thing. This would help him to dissociate the digital world from the Kaizer, and allow him to be here without turning into something he no longer wished to be. Plus, once he recovered from his shock, Wormmon settled down and looked to be enjoying the experience.

"So where do we start?" the Digimon asked his partner.

"I don't know," said Ken. Another thing the Kaizer would never have admitted, and therefore another small hammer-blow against that aspect of his personality. "I need information."

He transferred Wormmon up onto his shoulder then, and started walking, the small laptop computer he'd brought with him slapping against his thigh. A spike of nostalgia struck him as he walked, and he realized that this was the way he'd started out, all those years ago. Wormmon had been crawling beside him, though, and he'd been a lot shorter himself. But there had been a forest, and a small laptop, and the search for one of the many computer access ports that could be found all over the digital world, and which gave it part of its surreal atmosphere.

Almost in his ear, Wormmon said softly, "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," he replied. "Just thinking."

"I'll shut up then."

A faint smile touched his lips, unbidden and surprising, and he reached up to scratch Wormmon behind the antennae. "No, it's all right. I'm just remembering, that's all."

Ken was certain that normal caterpillars couldn't purr, but he had no other word for the pleased rumbling that came out of Wormmon's body at the scratching. He scratched until his fingers got tired, and by that time Wormmon had half-wrapped himself around the back of his master's neck and was dozing. Ken continued to pick his careful way through the forest.

Although athletic and active, Ken had never been much of a fan of the wide outdoors. Sports were one thing; they could usually be practiced indoors, and even when he played outdoors it was in a well-groomed park or stadium. He'd never been camping, or had any desire to start, and his only interest in forests was in admiring them from a car or train window. Yet he felt at ease here, at home and comfortable. He could detect the movements of distant Digimon, and was able to avoid encounters with them without much effort. It seemed very natural that he be able to do this. He analyzed this feeling, as he did with every oddity that passed through his mind, and came to the conclusion that it was because, at the base of it, this forest had more in common with the complex computer game he'd originally thought it was, than it did with a forest in the real world. Programs and games were things that Ken understood instinctively, and so it was only fitting that he understood this one.

_A game I could have won. A game I **was** winning. A game I can still win, if I just put my mind to it._

It was only when these thoughts burned away Ken's peaceful mood that he realized that he'd been in a peaceful mood in the first place. Curse all the Fates, it if wasn't one thing, it was another. To banish the Kaizer-ish thoughts, he reached up and engaged in the very un-Kaizer activity of scratching Wormmon's head again. The Digimon squirmed a little against the back of his neck and sighed happily in his sleep.

Wormmon was just one surprise after another. He hadn't been able to spend much time with his Digimon when they'd first met, and after that he'd been too busy trying to conquer the world to care. The Kaizer had drawn any number of conclusions about Wormmon, based on observation but colored by prejudice. Wormmon was industrious, clingy, insubordinate, insomniac, incompetent, slow, small, weak, and irritating. He was also sort of cute, although the Kaizer hadn't considered that an asset; one's weapon of doom should make its enemies tremble in terror, not want to cuddle it.

However, the more time Ken spent with his Digimon, the more he realized how wrong the Kaizer had been. Although Wormmon was willing to go without food or sleep for days on end if his master needed him to, he much preferred to curl up near Ken and doze on a full belly. Far from being a natural sycophant, he had a bright sense of humor and willingness to play that reminded Ken of his own early childhood. When awake and not playing, he was considerably less likely these days to demand Ken's attention in any way he could. A little love and concern was really all he needed, and it was only when he couldn't get it that he started to behave like a parasite attached to Ken's ankle. Although quiet and somewhat simple-minded when it came to human things, Wormmon proved to be quite insightful at times, seeing things with his untainted eyes that Ken took for granted.

The only thing the Kaizer had been right about was how small and weak Wormmon was. But that was all right, because Wormmon was just a rookie Digimon, and all rookies were small and weak. That could be changed, and would be changed, as soon as Ken could manage it.

Up ahead, he could hear something foraging around in the forest. Altering his course to avoid it, he skirted around a large rock, and found what he was looking for on the other side. "Hey Wormmon, wake up."

He didn't have to say it twice. Instantly alert, Wormmon said, "Where are we?"

"Still near Primary Village. I found a port." He sat down and flipped the computer open on his lap. The modem cable plugged quite neatly into the small receptacle half-hidden in the lee of the tilting stone. It was incongruous, but Ken had grown accustomed to the weird side of the digital world by now. He leaned back against the rock and flipped the computer's power switch, Wormmon on the ground and leaning against his leg.

Ahh, but this was nice. Just sitting here in the dappled sun, not searching for anything, not fighting anything, not pondering or plotting anything, just sitting in the sun and waiting for his computer to boot up. Of late, he'd rarely given himself permission to just rest and relax; attempting to live two separate, full-time lives required a lot of time, energy, and effort, and he'd begrudged the hours he was forced to spend asleep. Even after he had abandoned the real world and his life as Ken Ichijouji, he'd remained in the habit of cramming every possible moment with constructive work. It was a schedule, he knew, that had driven people to suicide, but as the Kaizer, he had refused to entertain the concept of burn-out. He was above such petty human weaknesses, as he needed to be if he wanted to rule the digital world.

The only problem was, now that he had decided to put his Kaizer persona behind him and stop trying to be someone he wasn't, Ken realized that he _was_ burned out. There was an unspeakable perfection in this moment, when he had nothing to do but wait, no pressing matters on his mind that could be dealt with before his computer completed its power-up cycle. He closed his eyes and smiled a little, one part of his mind following the familiar sounds his computer made as it checked his hard drive and ran through the virus scan, the rest of him wishing that things could always be this way.

But of course they couldn't be, and the moment ended. "What is thy bidding, my master?" asked the computer, in English and in the voice of Darth Vader. It startled Ken to hear it, as he had forgotten that it would do that. He made a note to himself to pick a different sound file for boot-up.

Ken didn't know where the networks stretching all over the digital world had come from. He made use of them, of course, and always had, and he figured the other Digi-Destined probably did as well. He knew that if two computers were connected to the same network at once, it was possible for one to trace the other one, so the first thing he did was a scan of the network for other eavesdroppers. It wouldn't do for one of the Digi-Destined, or worse yet, a Digimon with a grudge, to suddenly locate him. Nothing came up, so he got down to work.

"What are you doing?" said Wormmon quietly.

There had been a time when the Kaizer would have snapped at his companion to shut up and let him think. The urge to do so was very high, but there was no way to break a habit except to break it. He was silent a moment to compose his thoughts, soothe the flashfire of unwanted temper.

"I'm looking for the reason we're here."

"We're here because you wanted to come."

Ken shook his head, the anger melting away until he could give his friend a real smile. "No, I don't mean us, right here, right now. I mean in general. Why the Digi-Destined are here." He resumed programming in his criteria. "Nothing happens in the digital world without a reason."

Wormmon shivered. "It was that woman we saw. She's the reason."

Ken was inclined to agree. "Very likely, but I'd rather not jump to conclusions." He set the computer down on the ground. "It'll be a little while running."

Wormmon peered over Ken's lap at the laptop on the ground. "What's it doing?"

"Constructing a database. I need information. Everything in the digital world is information. When it finishes compiling the database, we can go home and I can start searching through it there."

"I like your home." Wormmon tucked all ten feet under himself, and then said, "I remember this."

Ken glanced down at him. "How do you mean?"

"It was like this when we first started trying to take over the world." Pale blue eyes peered up at him without rancor, without accusation, without anything but admiration. "You did something with your computer and set it on the ground, and we talked a little bit. You told me about your brother and about something you'd seen in your world. Then we played hide-and-seek until the computer was finished, and then you started designing your first dark rings."

He remembered now. "I was thinking about that earlier, before I found the port, but you're right. This is how it went after I found the port also." He managed a weak sort of smile. "I guess I haven't changed much."

"You had, but now you've changed back. Or, you're starting to."

"Maybe," he said. "I'm not sure I really remember what I was like back then."

Wormmon rolled over, so that he was leaning along Ken's leg, and rested his head on his master's thigh. "You don't have to be what you used to be."

"Don't I?" Ken reached into his pocket and pulled out the little pink square that he kept there, never out of his presence. The Crest of Kindness. What irony! "I used to be kind, and I need to be again if this thing is going to work."

"But you're bigger. Humans can't de-Digivolve, can they?"

He had to laugh a little at the ingenious look in those bright eyes. "No. I guess ... " He trailed off. What did he want to say? "I'm not the same person I used to be. And I can't go back. I can't turn back into little Ken-chan who never worried or concerned himself with anything. But I have to try."

He turned the crest over in his fingers. Kindness. His kindness was his greatest weakness, not a strength. Kindness was what had made him allow his family to shuffle him aside. His brother Osamu had needed to be brilliant, had needed the attention that came with it. His parents had needed to shower attention on their favorite eldest, had needed the adulation that came with having such a genius for offspring. It was kindness and consideration for what they needed that had made Ken let them ignore him as long as they had.

And it was kindness that had prepared the sensitive surface of his heart for the slashing it got every time his parents turned their backs on him. Every time his mother said, "That's nice dear," just to get him to leave her alone, every time his father didn't even hear him. Every time he'd been excited about something he'd seen or done and wanted to share that excitement with the ones he loved, and every time they brushed him off in favor of their better son. Every time, it was like a tiny part of his heart was left raw and bleeding, and Ken had accepted it because he was kind enough to understand, even that young, what his parents needed. He was kind enough to accommodate their needs. He was kind enough not to complain.

And when Osamu died? Well, he was kind enough to attempt to fill his brother's place. Not because he craved his parents' love, although he did, but because he understood what they wanted, and how much they wanted it.

For kindness, Ken had tried to become his brother. Becoming the Digimon Kaizer hadn't been an original part of that plan, but it had fit in quite well, regardless. Osamu'd had his mean streak every now and then, a mean streak that their parents never witnessed. To properly become Osamu, that streak had to be expressed as well, and the Kaizer was a splendid way to do this out of his parents' sight. In what was, as Ken had supposed at the time, a safe environment where nobody had to be hurt by it.

"Wormmon," he said suddenly. The little Digimon offered him instant attention, a feature that never failed to bring a small thrill to Ken; even when playing the Kaizer, he'd been comforted by the knowledge that he had but to call, and Wormmon would be listening. "Why is it that I understand people so well, but nobody understands me? It's not fair."

"I understand you," said Wormmon. "I'm your Digimon."

He tucked the crest back into his pocket and then dropped a hand to idly stroke Wormmon's head. "It's not the same thing. I mean, I know what people expect of me, and I comply with it. I tried so hard for so long to be what my parents wanted me to be. I worked so hard to make sure that nobody walked away from me feeling bad about themselves. Why doesn't anyone do that for me?"

"I try to do that. Are you upset about something?" Wormmon rubbed his cheek on Ken's thigh.

"No. Yes ... I don't know." He sighed. Frustrating. He really didn't know. There was something inside of him, a longing of some kind, but he wasn't sure if he'd classify it as being upset. "I want someone to tiptoe around _my_ feelings for once." Yes, as soon as he said it, Ken knew that this was true.

"What about Daisuke?"

"What about him?"

"He came to see you and you weren't so unhappy when he left. Is that what you mean?"

Ken kicked the heel of his shoe against the ground. "I don't know about Daisuke." He looked down at Wormmon. "What do you think of him?"

"I think he is a nice human and he has a nice Digimon. What don't you know about him?"

Ken didn't answer right away. He looked back up at the sky, or what he could see of it between the branches anyway. He hadn't intended to break down into tears right in front of his visitor. He definitely hadn't intended to kiss Daisuke's throat. Of course, he hadn't intended to become the Josef Mengele of the digital world either. "I just don't know," he said finally. "I don't know why he came over to cheer me up. I certainly didn't deserve it. It _was_ really ... quite considerate of him, wasn't it?" He sighed at the tiny patches of visible sky. "I don't know Wormmon. I feel connected to him, somehow."

"Like I'm connected to you?" There was a spark of hope in Wormmon's voice, and Ken wondered why that was important.

"I don't know. I've felt connected since I first saw him. It made me angry, I was the _Digimon Kaizer_ after all, and who was he? A pest trying to thwart me. But I'm not angry anymore, and now I just don't know."

Wormmon sounded confused when he said, "But isn't that what you said you wanted?"

Ken gathered up his Digimon into his arms, still looking skyward. "Maybe." Was it? He hadn't asked Daisuke to come over that day. When his mother told him who had arrived, he hadn't quite believed it, and actually seeing the other boy in his apartment had been a shock. _He's here to fight me,_ had been his first thought, but that had turned out to be untrue. He found himself wishing that Daisuke were here, so he could ask what his motives were and settle things once and for all.

He eyed the laptop a moment, then reached out with one hand to check on the progress of the database compilation. Almost completed. He relaxed again back against the rock, wondering why he had a sudden urge to send an email message to Daisuke, and wondering why the thought of doing so sent a rush of adrenaline through him.

Wormmon looked up, alarmed. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong. Why?"

"Your heart's going so fast! Are you frightened?" The Digimon cast darting looks all around, searching for the danger that threatened his partner.

"No. I'm fine, I told you. I'm just ... I was thinking about sending Daisuke a message and ... it makes me nervous."

"Why?"

He shrugged, attempting to cloak himself in an air of unconcern, which he knew would not fool his Digimon, but which felt nice to have regardless. "I don't know what he would say. I ... " he paused, and then said, "I almost feel like I'm in love." Frowning, he examined this statement, and amended, "Well, maybe not that."

"Tell me about love," asked Wormmon, settling his head down again, his alarm passing.

"Love is an emotional attachment to another person. It serves several purposes, primary of which is the continuation of the species."

Wormmon looked up at him, so blank in his incomprehension that Ken couldn't help smiling. "Children," said Ken. "People who fall in love have more children, so there's survival value in love to humanity as a whole."

"I don't understand, Ken-chan, but I believe you."

"There are other kinds of love too. They all serve a purpose."

"That sounds cold."

Looking down at his Digimon, Ken wondered how this conversation had gotten started. "I thought it was."

Something new had entered the forest. Ken's sense of the flow of the digital world around him told him that, so he checked his Digivice; someone had arrived. Maybe Daisuke. He felt another stab of adrenaline at the thought, and Wormmon's gaze became alarmed again.

"What is it?"

"Someone's entered the digital world. Nearby."

"Daisuke?"

Ken scrutinized his Digivice. "No. Well, yes, he must be there, because it's all of them. They're in Primary Village, I think."

His laptop beeped complacently, signaling that it had finished its task. Ken shrugged a bit, put away the black Digivice, and eased Wormmon off his lap so he could work.

The amount of information collected by the network for him was vast. Wormmon went back to sleep nearby while he worked, organizing the data, culling parts out to be checked separately, cross-referencing certain things. While this was not necessarily difficult, certainly not for a programmer of his caliber, it was time-consuming, and it was just as well that Wormmon elected to doze through it. Interruptions, no matter how well-meant, were irritants.

It was hours later when he finally was able to start looking at the data itself. He anticipated having to read the data for a few hours, if not days, before he got a sense of the proper flow of it, and that sense of the proper behavior of the data was necessary if he wanted to be able to spot it when he encountered abnormal behavior. So he was very surprised to find something almost immediately that set off alarms in his head.

He flipped over to a different section to see if the same thing occurred there. Scanning through lines of data, he was stopped very quickly when it _did_ repeat itself. And then again. He nudged Wormmon with his knee, and, as always, was rewarded by instant wakefulness and attention.

"Wormmon," he said. "Do all Digimon come out of eggs?"

"I think so," said his companion after a moment of thought. "I don't know where else they could come from."

"They never come out of ... oh, say, control spires, do they?"

Wormmon gave him a strange look. "No."

Ken chewed on his lip, and then sent a query into the network again while he explained to his Digimon. Explaining his findings and plans to Wormmon was something he'd never done as the Kaizer, so it seemed that he ought to start now. "A couple of control spires have gone missing. Maybe they just got knocked down by angry Digimon, but I've found three of them so far that went missing and suddenly a new Digimon appeared nearby. That strikes me as highly unusual."

Just by looking at Wormmon, Ken could tell that he agreed, without the Digimon having to say anything. It gratified him. Feeling a sudden need to investigate this, Ken made note of the nearest missing spire's last known location, shut down his laptop, and picked up Wormmon.

"Where are we going now?"

"To find out what happened to that thing."

But, as luck would have it, he never quite made it to the site of the missing spire. Because as Ken was carefully skirting Primary Village, with the intent of avoiding both Digimon and Digi-Destined, he saw what he privately suspected was the cause of the difficulty moving up the ridge above the village.

In the heart of the village, Ken could hear laughter, which relieved him. If the baby Digimon were laughing, nothing untoward had happened there yet. Eyeing the lay of the ridge, and the path the woman was taking, he doubted she'd ever entered the village at all, but he decided he would check through the area later, just to make sure. Shushing Wormmon and stashing his laptop behind a rock, he sneaked up the ridge after her.

High above the village, a black control spire was raised to the sky. The woman moved carefully toward it, and Ken began to have a hard time following her without giving himself away. The ground turned rocky, and then pebbly, and finally Ken had to stop following altogether because the ground crunched so much underfoot that he wondered the whole world didn't know he was there. But, by the time this extreme was reached, his target was almost at the spire, so he concealed himself and Wormmon behind a rock to watch what she did.

Even after seeing it, Ken wasn't sure of what happened. The woman, with her back to him, did something at the base of the spire, and said some words he couldn't make out. Then the spire ... changed. Melted, or imploded, or something. The sharp obelisk lines curled in on themselves, and after a moment a small Digimon hovered before the woman. Wormmon, whispering in Ken's ear, identified it for him as a Thundermon.

The woman's voice rang out for him now, almost as if she wanted him to hear. "Go destroy Primary Village," she said, pointing it out for the newly-created Digimon. "Make it look accidental by destroying the bedrock beneath it. You can get there through the old water lines. Go now."

Ken decided the time for gathering information was past. He stood up and stepped around the rock into the path. "You can't do that!" The Thundermon, undeterred, flew off down the ridge.

The woman turned, a slight smile visible on her face, even at this distance. She didn't seem at all surprised to see him. "Can't I?" she said. "You've proven to be a disappointment, Kaizer, but your spires remain useful. As you might say, if you want something done right ..."

Wormmon said, "Please, Ken-chan, this is my chance! Let me fight! Let me finally fight!" He leaped off Ken's shoulder to the ground.

"Certainly," said the woman, sounding delighted by the prospect. "Send your Digimon to fight me, and while he's doing that, you can watch Primary Village be swallowed by the earth." She pointed a thin, stick-like finger down at the village. Something was going on just outside of it; dust rose up from a hole in the ground, and even from here Ken could see the frantic bouncing of baby Digimon through the village.

Ken made a swift tactical decision. "We can't do anything at all unless you Digivolve, Wormmon. Think you can?"

"I want to try!" Wormmon trembled with excitement.

Maybe that would be sufficient. Ken had the black Digivice in hand almost immediately. He hoped this was going to be similar to forcing a dark evolution on a Digimon, because otherwise there was no way this was going to work. He held out the Digivice, and said, "Okay, do it!"

It turned out to be very similar to a dark evolution, only much easier. There was no fighting with the will of the Digimon in front of him, warping it into compliance. Wormmon practically leaped into the wave of power that came out of the black Digivice and almost instantly shifted forms. Ken, who had always had the logical idea that a champion Wormmon would be some kind of giant butterfly, was surprised but not displeased to see his friend turn into a far more dangerous-looking insect. He looked up at the creature that had been Wormmon, forgetting for just an instant the danger to the village, and the creepy woman a few dozen meters away, as the champion Digimon triumphantly called out his name. _Stingmon. Appropriate._ He hoped the pride was visible in his eyes, because he didn't feel like sharing a smile with his Digimon where this woman could see it.

Turning to face the woman, Stingmon prepared to attack, but Ken couldn't let him do that. "No, not her! We don't have time!"

"We don't? Oh, right, the village." More dust rose out of that hole in the ground beside Primary Village, and one of the largest Digimon that Ken had ever seen outside of his own creations pawed its way out of the hole. He guessed that one of the Digimon belonging to the other children had Digivolved. Ken gave the woman a final, baleful glare, and reached up toward Stingmon. He was caught up into the sky, safe in the vast claws of his friend.

Ken could tell there was no time, but quick decisions had never been one of his problems, especially when he had this much information to go on. "Set me down on one of the roofs near the center and then go destroy that thing. The others won't know how to fight it. They don't know what it is, so you'll have to do it."

"Right." With the swiftness of a hunting dragonfly, Stingmon flitted into the village, dropped Ken on the sloping roof of one of the higher buildings, in the shadow of the building's cupola, and then dove into the dust just in time to rescue someone who had been blown up into the air by an attack on the ground. Ken couldn't see which one, but it was a human, and therefore one of the Digi-Destined. With any luck, all their attention would be on the battle for a while.

He took the opportunity to scan the area around the village for any sign at all that the strange woman had been there. It wouldn't replace a house-to-house search, but the more he thought about it, the less Ken believed that the resident Digimon would appreciate having him poke through their homes. He didn't want to be the Digimon Kaizer, and he did his level best to behave like someone other than the Digimon Kaizer, but there was no point in deceiving himself.

After determining that there was nothing to see that could be spotted from up here, he looked back into the sky just in time to see Stingmon stoop in for the kill. _How could I have ever thought him worthless?_ Unpracticed as he was, having only Digivolved for the first time a few minutes ago, Stingmon in the air was grace personified, and Ken had a hard time swallowing around the pride.

Oh, dear. Just as he'd suspected, the Digi-Destined weren't taking Stingmon's interference very well. Dwarfed beside their Digimon, the other children were staring, open-mouthed, up into the sky at Stingmon and the dissipating remains of his victim. Ken had determined a long time ago that they were a bit on the squeamish side when it came down to the wire. To his knowledge, they'd never killed one of his slaves aside from the freakish Kimeramon, merely removed the rings and spirals to free them. Actions that he could, in retrospect, applaud, but which hadn't really prepared them for what they'd just seen.

Ken briefly entertained the idea of explaining to them what had just happened. He ran several possible conversations over in his mind, and concluded that the chances of them believing him were far too low. It wasn't worth the fight he'd probably get. _Besides, what would be the point in shattering the illusion that I'm a ruthless bastard? I **am** a ruthless bastard, ruthless enough for all five of them if necessary. Let them retain their innocence, if they can. It would sound like I was offering excuses anyway, and I can't excuse anything that I've done. Ever._

Regardless, he couldn't just hang Stingmon out to dry there. Any second now, the accusations would start flying, and if he didn't do something, they'd all be aimed at Stingmon, who didn't deserve any of them. So he stepped out from the shadow in which he'd concealed himself, and although he did nothing more than that to draw their attention, suddenly all eyes left Stingmon and were riveted on him. The part of him that still recognized the appeal of being the Kaizer was gratified; he still knew how to command an audience.

Digimon and Digi-Destined alike stared up at him, shock in what Stingmon had done giving way to shock in his appearance. Since diverting their wrath from Stingmon onto himself was the object of this exercise, Ken counted it a success. He glanced quickly from one to another, gauging the possible levels of ire at what was, he had to admit, the apparent murder of a legitimate Digimon.

The two girls seemed the hardest hit, at least from the outset. Watching their expressions was like looking at the cover of a book entitled _Fear and Loathing._ If he remembered correctly, one of them was the Child of Light, the other the Child of Love and Sincerity. Takeru, the one he'd fought with just after Kimeramon's completion, needed to pick his jaw up off the ground, while the youngest of the group sat half-hidden in the paw of the giant Digimon, his expression unreadable. That really big Digimon must belong to him then.

It was Daisuke, however, that sent a burning, bleeding gash across Ken's heart. Wide-eyed, he stared upward at Ken, first in disbelief, then with something that Ken could only interpret as betrayal. This was something he hadn't anticipated. A certain amount of anger, a certain amount of hatred, maybe even the fear that was swiftly leaving both girls. He told himself that he could bear it if Daisuke hated him, although a tiny voice of honesty admitted that it would have been very hard to live with Daisuke's hatred. He hadn't, however, anticipated hurting Daisuke, and knowing that he had was like the brush of sandpaper across an open wound.

_I could choose not to care. It had to be done, that wasn't a real Digimon anyway. Let them think of me what they will, I can choose not to concern myself with their feelings._ He could feel the old walls starting to rise again, shielding his heart with ice. It was a familiar feeling, and it was comforting in a way to feel himself going numb, the pain being soothed. But that was the way of the Digimon Kaizer. As much as it hurt him, if he wanted to be Ken Ichijouji, he was going to have to bleed a little. After all, the only way to break a habit was to break it.

He just wished there wasn't so much of his blood on the floor already, waiting to accept this new sacrifice.

Stingmon, job finished, buzzed toward him. He gestured a little with one hand, and the beautiful creature reverted back into Wormmon and snuggled down in his arms. The Digi-Destined murmured; he didn't doubt that they recognized Wormmon. Time to go.

Hoping the other children were still too shocked to move, Ken lightly leaped off the roof and into the street. He threaded his way back out of the village, putting as much distance between himself and the Digi-Destined as possible. He carried Wormmon the entire way, and not just because Wormmon couldn't keep up; it was clear from the way the little Digimon trembled that his partner was exhausted.

Beneath the shadow of the ridge, Ken retrieved his laptop and scanned around for the woman. There was no sign of her, no indication that she had ever existed, but that didn't surprise him. He would check his database later to see if the network picked up her movements, but somehow he doubted it would. The wisdom in keeping this little piece of insanity to himself just kept getting better. Except for Daisuke, they'd already disliked him, and with good reason. Now, he was fairly certain that an encounter with them was going to end in violence long before he was able to make them believe a story that was completely unbelievable, and for which he had no proof aside from a missing control spire.

Ken began to move back into the forest, a part of him wishing desperately that he would hear Daisuke's voice calling out his name behind him, asking him to wait up. That same part demanded that he turn around, go back and explain the entire business; that part insisted that Daisuke would believe him. He couldn't do that, of course, because Daisuke _wouldn't_ believe him, but it was bittersweet to imagine doing it. He could almost imagine how it would go, because although the other Digi-Destined hated him, Daisuke didn't. Daisuke was the exception, Daisuke had come to visit him and comfort him, and Daisuke had accepted his kiss.

On several levels, Ken was revolted by what he had done with Daisuke. A show of weakness, a weepy little scene during which one soul sought solace in another. Silly emotional things, something humans did when driven by hormones and instinct. Ken was self-aware, he wasn't a slave to his emotions and he didn't have to indulge in them when they were a threat to his dignity. Sometime in the near future, he was going to have to figure out what exactly had cracked his self-control, sent it scattering like crazed ice, and allowed him to practically assault Daisuke the way he had. Even upon reflection, looking back on the incident with what _should_ be the cold, dispassionate gaze of hindsight, Ken was amazed at the strength of the emotions which had finally slipped out, and could feel them stirring within him still.

He knew he ought to be doing something constructive right now. He should access the network again to pick up the latest bits of data, and then go home and do a thorough analysis. There were patterns in all things, and he was certain that there was a pattern to this. The only issue was in identifying it. Wormmon also probably needed a nap and some food, not necessarily in that order, and on top of everything else, he had a math test to study for. So why was he still walking through the woods, remembering the way it had felt to hold Daisuke down and make him writhe?

Growling a little, he deliberately kicked a protruding root, stubbing his toe and jolting himself out of this counterproductive mode of thought. Pathetic. He'd been in better control of himself when he'd entered the digital world, and maybe that was the entire problem. Maybe this was just another Kaizer-aspect brought out by the fight. He'd go home, forget about the data for now, and get his emotions leashed again before he completely lost it. Then he could come back.

The black Digivice was in hand almost before he finished making this decision. He nudged Wormmon. "Let's go home, we'll come back again later." Wormmon sleepily agreed, and a moment later the Digiport was open and Ken stepped back through.


	3. Chapter Three - Tarnish (Daisuke)

Author's Note : I didn't want to write another fic before seeing the next episode or two, as I try not to contradict (or at least _blatantly_ contradict) what occurs in the series itself. However, I'm sick and freakin' tired of waiting for Fox (hereafter officially renamed "Fux") to screw up their nerve and show the damnedable things. I've read translations of the Japanese spoilers, obviously, but without actually seeing the episodes, I can't guarantee that this will not contradict future storyline. I apologize in advance if it does.

--Irhista Scetare Lhail

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_"Can I talk to you?"_

"Sure, you know I'm here for you. What's on your mind?"

"No, I don't mean like this. Can I meet you somewhere?"

"Uh, sure. Does it matter where?"

"Not to me. Does it matter to you?"

"I'm not the one who wants to have this conversation, Ken."

"Right. You know that little place around the corner from my school?"

"The one where the high school students hang out, or the one next door?"

"The one next door. They serve mostly American food there. Can I meet you there in about an hour?"

"No problem. Hey, Ken ... are you all right?"

"Yeah. Just meet me there in an hour for lunch, okay? I'll pay."

"Never let it be said Motomiya Daisuke turned down free food."

"It won't be said by me."

Daisuke ran the conversation over in his mind as he waited outside the named restaurant for Ken to arrive. The phone call had really surprised him; Ken had made his feelings about hanging out with the other Digi-Destined quite clear, and had thus far turned down two separate offers to hook up with the group. Having made the second offer more or less behind Miyako's back and over her objections, Daisuke couldn't say there had been no relief present when Ken turned him down again. He also couldn't say that he'd liked being flat rejected like that. It had taken almost two hours before he'd convinced himself that the rejection hadn't been personally directed at him.

He was considerably more optimistic about this meeting, though. Not only was it happening at Ken's behest, but it would just be him and Ken, and maybe by now Ken had had enough time to sort out his feelings. Even if Ken never agreed to prowl around the digital world with the rest of them, that didn't mean that the two of them had to avoid each other, did it? He understood that the other boy needed a bit of time to himself after what had amounted to a nervous breakdown, but Daisuke couldn't help thinking about him, and it took a lot of willpower not to call him, email him, or go check up on him at home again. Especially not to go check up on him at home again.

When Ken's slender outline rounded the corner and started down the sidewalk toward him, Daisuke checked the time on his Digivice. Precisely one hour after Ken had called. He grinned. Naturally.

"Hello," said Ken, and glanced at the blue Digivice in Daisuke's hand. "I haven't kept you waiting, have I?" He was carrying a slim black case, a briefcase, or perhaps a small computer.

"No, I got here early." He tucked his Digivice away and said, "Want to go in?"

Ken nodded and opened the door, holding it open for Daisuke. The inside of the restaurant was quiet, crowded with people eating lunch and people waiting to each lunch, and decorated mostly in sandy earth tones. The same people who had been studiously ignoring Daisuke for the past ten minutes suddenly couldn't be attentive enough.

"Ichijouji-san," said a waiter, bowing quite low. "Your reservation is ready, if you'll follow me?" From the look on Ken's face, he wasn't impressed, but his reply was a polite enough assent.

As he followed Ken and the waiter to a quiet corner table, Daisuke said softly, "You really rate."

"I come here a lot," said Ken. "People notice me. I can't help it."

"Hey, I'm not complaining."

The table was semi-private, with rather high partitions dividing it from the rest of the restaurant. The waiter left them with a pair of menus and a fresh pot of hot tea. Upon opening the menu, Daisuke was extremely glad that Ken had already offered to pay. There was no way he would be able to afford having lunch here otherwise, not unless his allowance went up a _lot._

"I've never had American before," he said. "What's good?"

"All of it, actually," said Ken, pouring two cups of tea and setting one in front of Daisuke. "Try a steak."

"How about if I just let you order," said Daisuke, closing the menu and putting it down.

"If you like." Ken sipped his tea, and went silent, staring hard off into the restaurant. Sneaking a glance that way, Daisuke saw several people looking abashedly away.

"I'm starting to see why you don't like being famous."

Ken shrugged a little, setting the teacup on its saucer. "Given the choice between fame and fortune, I'd take fortune and privacy any day."

Daisuke wondered if all this constant attention was one of the things that had driven Ken into the digital world. It wouldn't surprise him if it was. Ken fiddled a moment with the teacup, and Daisuke found himself watching the graceful movements of the other boy's fingers. This was the closest he'd been to Ken in days, and it would be so easy to reach across the table, take his hand, draw it to his lips ... To distract himself from this line of thought, Daisuke said, "So what'd you want to talk to me about?"

"Your pardon, Ichijouji-san," interrupted a very soft voice. Both Ken and Daisuke turned irritated looks on the interloper, who proved to be a young woman of about sixteen standing a polite pace away from the table. "Could I trouble you for your autograph, sir?"

Daisuke had to credit Ken with the ability to make an immediate switch of attitude. "Certainly," he said, all traces of irritation wiped clean away. The girl offered him a small book, a pen, and a brilliant smile, and Ken dutifully signed while Daisuke occupied himself with his tea and locked down an iron clamp of self-control. Delighted, the girl commented that she had seen Ken's last game, and asked if he was planning on becoming a professional soccer player. Ken doubted that he would, which seemed to disappoint her, although she concealed it well. Then Ken returned the autograph book and pen to her, and she excused herself back to her own table, where she and several female friends fell into excited conversation.

"Man, I hope they don't all end up over here," said Daisuke. "We'll never get our lunch."

"I brought my laptop," said Ken, his dark eyes twinkling. "It's got a Digiport on it, if they try it, we can just escape."

Daisuke laughed. "That's a little extreme, isn't it?"

"Maybe a little. More tea?"

The waiter chose that moment to appear. Ken divested himself of the menus and ordered steaks for both of them, which rid them of the waiter as well.

"Tell me something, Daisuke," said Ken. He look down at his teacup and began to stir his tea, although Daisuke hadn't seen him put anything into it.

"Sure."

Ken looked up then. "What do you think of me?"

That was an unexpected question, although it made Daisuke's heart flutter. "I think you're a really neat guy, Ken. I think you scare me sometimes with how smart you are, and, well, I find you really attractive." Daisuke could feel blood rushing to his face with this admission, although it wasn't anything Ken didn't know already. He decided not to mention any of the many reasons why Ken was so attractive, on both physical and emotional levels. It might not sound very good to say that half of what Daisuke found so irresistible had been Ken's Kaizer persona: dangerous, untouchable, and masterful. It definitely wouldn't sound good to say that the other half was how beautifully damaged Ken was now, how in his asymmetrical pain Ken had somehow become ten times as alluring while broken than he could ever have been while whole. Daisuke didn't entirely understand how this worked, but he knew that it was the wrong thing to tell Ken.

"I guess I just don't understand why," said Ken, as if determined to thwart Daisuke's silence on the subject. He resumed moodily stirring his tea. "I did some really awful things to you."

"That's okay. Don't worry about that stuff, I've already forgotten it." Daisuke smiled, hoping the smile would lure Ken out of his darkening mood. It would only work if Ken saw it, though, and Ken wasn't cooperating. He thought about reaching out to tilt the darker boy's head up, but he knew that if he touched Ken, he wouldn't be able to stop touching him.

"Well, I'm glad one of us can." Ken tapped the teaspoon on the side of the cup and laid it in the saucer before taking a slow sip of tea. "I want you to know that I'm ... sorry, for what I did before, when you came to cheer me up. I didn't intend to do that."

"Why are you sorry about that?" asked Daisuke, genuinely confused. He found his hand unconsciously going to the side of his neck, where Ken had kissed him, and a fresh rush of desire struck him at the memory. _No, not now._ "It was nice."

A flash of dark blue as Ken eyed him a moment. "You don't have to say that just to spare my feelings."

"I'm not sparing your feelings, Ken. I liked it. Do I have to prove it?" A little more vehemence entered Daisuke's tone than he'd intended to put there, and he regretted it immediately when Ken sighed.

"I'm sorry, Daisuke. I guess I just have a hard time believing that anyone would like me." There went the spoon into the tea again. Daisuke stifled an urge to grab it.

"Well, I do."

"I especially have a hard time believing that you would like me. I never gave you a reason to start." Ken frowned down at his tea, then up at Daisuke. "I almost feel like something outside my control is pushing me toward you, and it scares me a little. If you hadn't stopped me the other day, Daisuke ... I wouldn't have stopped at all. Do you have any idea how hard it is for me to sit here, this close to you, and _not_ kiss you?"

Daisuke blinked, going still. There was a ring of familiarity in Ken's words, something that fit so perfectly with what Daisuke already knew, but hadn't known that he knew. "I ... think I have an idea," he said. Why wasn't he surprised that Ken was able to codify and put into words something that Daisuke knew only on a visceral level?

Another interruption then as their lunch arrived. Beef was so expensive in Japan that Daisuke had never been able to try it, and the scent was strange and tantalizing. Forks and knives were provided along with the more familiar chopsticks, and Ken had to show Daisuke how to hold the fork properly to get the steak cut up into small enough pieces. After butchering the meat, Daisuke abandoned the strange implements and ate with the chopsticks instead.

"Is it supposed to bleed like this?"

"Yes," said Ken. "If it doesn't bleed, it's overcooked. That white stuff there is supposed to go on the potato."

The challenge of eating foreign food succeeded in calming Daisuke's nerves somewhat, and his irrational desire to move around the table and kiss Ken gradually subsided. They ate mostly in silence until Ken said softly, "We're too young for this, you know."

"Are we?"

"Mmm. You don't think so?"

Daisuke considered. "I had a major crush on a girl in my class last year, and I still have a crush on Hikari."

The look Ken gave him was a lot sharper than Daisuke expected; it was something he might have expected to see from the Digimon Kaizer, and for some reason he got a pleasurable chill. "Why Hikari?" asked Ken, in a very soft tone.

"I don't know." Daisuke took a last bite of meat and gave the matter some thought. "I've just really liked her, ever since I met her. I think what little consideration she gives me is just pity, but I still like her."

Ken set down his chopsticks, and suddenly Daisuke had a hundred percent of the other boy's attention, possibly for the very first time ever. He found it highly disconcerting to be the sole focus of Ken's concentration, and shifted a bit in his seat.

There was a long, uncomfortable silence before Ken said, "I do believe I'm jealous."

"Of what? Believe me, nobody is more aware of the fact that nothing will ever happen between me and 'Kari than I am."

"That's not the point!" snapped Ken, proving that the Kaizer wasn't dead, merely sleeping. Daisuke suppressed another shiver of excitement. In a somewhat lower tone, Ken continued, "I'm not jealous of anything you've done. I'm jealous that I don't have all of your heart."

"Oh." Actually, now that Ken had pointed it out, it was rather obvious. Daisuke scratched his nose and said, "Sorry."

The frightfully intense look shifted away as Ken picked up his chopsticks again. "I'll live." He went silent for a moment, and Daisuke sensed his attention sliding back out onto its customary several tracks. "Actually, this makes this ... compulsion of mine all the more disturbing."

"Why?"

"Think about it. You have a crush on Hikari, a girl. That means you're normal, Daisuke."

"What, are you saying you aren't?"

"Yes," said Ken, and there was an acid undertone of bitterness in the word. "I'm not normal in any other respect, I suppose it shouldn't surprise me that I'm not normal in this one. But that's not what I was trying to say. If you're a normal, heterosexual boy, and yet you still like me, what does that mean?"

"I don't know," admitted Daisuke, mildly embarrassed at this topic. Honestly, he'd never really thought about it that way. Being attracted to Ken had just seemed so easy and natural, but now that he thought about it, he wasn't attracted to any other boy he knew. "You're right, that's weird."

The bitterness was back in Ken's voice when he said in a low, I-don't-want-to-be-overheard tone, "No weirder than wanting desperately to sleep with you when I'm only eleven."

Wanted. Daisuke was wanted, and desperately at that. He had to close his eyes, overwhelmed by desire. He indulged in the delightful, ticklish feelings for a moment, and then beat them back down with thoughts of cold showers. When he opened his eyes again, it was to the sight of Ken's dark eyes gone misty with thoughts of his own. Damn, but that didn't help at all; with his eyes soft and unfocused, and his mouth relaxed rather than tightly guarding his secrets, Ken was unsettlingly effeminate, and shockingly beautiful. There was something exotic about the way Ken so readily switched between fragility and uncompromising dominance, something disturbing and wild that concealed itself beneath the cool ambivalence that was shown to the rest of the world.

Ken returned from wherever he'd gone, licked his lips, and looked away. "Do you understand how difficult this is for me?"

Not trusting his voice, Daisuke could only nod dumbly. Ken continued, "I had a feeling you might. That's why I have to stay away from you, Daisuke."

_"What?"_ The words washed over him like a splash of ice water.

Very quietly, Ken said, "I don't know how long I can keep my hands off you. It gets more and more difficult every time I see you, and if I keep seeing you, someday I'm going to run out of self-control."

Daisuke stared at him. This wasn't happening. "This isn't happening," he said.

"I have to stay away from you. I _have_ to." This last was almost whispered, and Ken closed his eyes as if willing himself to believe it.

"Ken ... Ken, no," said Daisuke, almost pleading but he didn't care. "It'll be all right."

But the dark head shook, and Ken whispered, "I'm sorry. Can't you see how _wrong_ it would be? We're too young, and Daisuke, you're too straight, and I'm too ... too tarnished."

It was the tarnish that Daisuke loved best, but how could he say that? "Please, Ken, don't do this to me."

"I have to." His eyes opened again, and the twilight was within them. "I couldn't tell you over the phone, it wouldn't be fair. And I couldn't tell you without making you understand why."

"But ..." Daisuke hesitated, unsure if he really wanted to go this far, and then he decided that he had nothing to gain by not saying it, and everything to lose if he didn't. "But Ken, I love you."

Ken's eyes closed again, and for a minute it looked like he might start crying; he didn't, but the internal war was awful to behold. "I love you, too," he whispered. "And I love you too much. Don't say any more, you're making this hurt so much more than it has to." A moment later, with the tears finally mastered, Ken wiped his nose on his napkin and said, in an almost normal tone of voice, "Things might have been different if we'd been a little older." He picked at what was left of his lunch, and then dropped his chopsticks onto the plate and poured some hot tea into his cup.

Watching Ken shut down his emotions like that stunned Daisuke, and at the same time made him ache for the other boy. There was something decidedly tragic about the fact that he was even capable of it, much less that he was doing it now with the same ruthless efficiency that marked everything he did. Daisuke suddenly felt like a voyeur, eavesdropping on a legacy of pain that left its mark in this _ability_ of Ken's. He wanted so badly to take Ken into his arms and just hold him, but of course that was the very thing Ken feared.

Daisuke remained silent when the waiter reappeared, and while Ken declined desert and paid for the meal. He felt vaguely detached and unreal, as if this entire afternoon had been just an unpleasant dream from which he would awaken at any moment. Not see Ken anymore, not even just to hang out as friends ... 

"Daisuke?" said Ken. "Are you ready to go?"

"Yeah," said Daisuke, reacting on automatic, even though the end of this horrible lunch date might be the last time he ever saw Ken. There was a sharp knock when Ken retrieved his laptop, and accidentally rapped it on the edge of the table; the sound made Daisuke jump. He wished it would make him wake up and find out that he'd dreamed this entire day.

Outside the restaurant again, in the oily breeze that carried the scents of metal and gasoline and several restaurants and innumerable people, Ken said, "I'm sorry, Daisuke. Please understand why I have to do this."

Daisuke couldn't bear it any longer. Moving slowly, so that Ken could draw back if he really didn't want to be touched, Daisuke raised his hand to the other boy's cheek. Ken trembled delicately, but didn't retreat, not even when Daisuke rose up a bit onto his toes and brushed his lips against Ken's.

It was his last hope, and it didn't work. Ken's lips parted and he let out a soft, despairing moan, but Daisuke could feel the unyielding rod of self-control behind it. Although Ken clenched his fists, his arms remained at his sides, rather than going around Daisuke. Wrapped up in a tight net of self-denial, Ken stood and allowed Daisuke to kiss him, and when Daisuke finally pulled away, he quivered like a plucked guitar string with the effort required to keep himself from chasing Daisuke's lips. It would have been heartbreaking even if Daisuke _didn't_ love him so much. As it was, Daisuke felt like something vital was being ripped out of his soul.

With a forced lightheartedness that he definitely didn't feel, Daisuke whispered, "Goodbye, Ken. I'll do what you want."

"Thank you."

Walking backward, feeling like he was making the greatest mistake of his life but with no clue how to change Ken's mind, Daisuke abandoned the one he loved. He told himself that he could be strong about this, that he could live without Ken until the other boy decided that it was safe for them to be around each other again, that he could wait until Ken changed his mind. But when he rounded the corner, all he felt like doing was collapsing to the ground and waiting to die.


	4. Chapter Four - Shame (Ken)

Author's Note : This is the sequel to "[Tarnish][1]," which in turn was a sequel to "[Sacrifice][2]," and in turn that was a sequel to "[Guilt][3]." I'm sorry if that puts an undue burden on you. You _might_ be able to figure out what's going on without reading the others, but I have gone to no special effort to make this possible. ONCE AGAIN, I had no intention of putting out another one until the next episode aired, but I also have no intention of waiting another two weeks to post something. I've waited long enough, and so have y'all; I apologize in advance if the next episode shreds this, although I will certainly do my best to accommodate canon. Also, Ken's nihilistic realizations are pretty depressing, and not intended to slam anyone else's philosophy or cause anyone to jump off a bridge.

--Irhista Scetare Lhail

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__

I am alone, locked in my memories  
There's nowhere left for me to hide  
But I am not real, I've made all I am -  
- with lies  
- "Why" by Stabbing Westward

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Ken was daydreaming, which was very unlike him. Normally, he knew, he would be fascinated by whatever the teacher was trying to explain to the class about momentum, but today he just couldn't seem to focus. He looked up at the blackboard, where a diagram of several arrowed lines, representing vectors of force, had been drawn and labeled in a mix of Roman letters and katakana; for once, Ken couldn't seem to decipher it. A half-minute of staring at it, hoping to understand what the teacher was saying, got him nowhere, and he knew he ought to at least copy the diagram so he could sort things out later.

Instead, he glanced moodily down at his notebook and idly doodled an abstract series of curling lines along the margins of the paper, letting his pen wander as his thoughts wandered. Daisuke. He couldn't believe how much he wanted to be with Daisuke. It passed all bounds of rationality, surpassed all reason. Unbidden, the memory of the taste of Daisuke's skin - salt and musk, green grass and sunlight, and something else that was simply _Daisuke_ - tingled along his lips and tongue, and Ken discreetly wiped the back of his hand over his mouth to banish it. Nothing could be done about the other reaction his body undertook except to pray it wasn't noticeable and hope it went away. Resolutely, Ken began to copy down the diagram, putting as much of his concentration into it as he could; vectors and the laws of momentum seemed like just the antidote he needed right then.

For a little while, it seemed to work. Copying down the diagram did help him start to understand what the teacher had been talking about all this time, and this began to edge the unwelcome thoughts of Daisuke out of his mind. Then it backfired, as he was hit rather suddenly with the first nasty revelation of his day. What difference did it make if he learned this subject, really?

School was just a rat race, going from the meaningless start of elementary to the insignificant end of middle school. From there, one moved on to the new, hollow race of high school, and from there, college. Once out of college, one gained the honor of becoming just another faceless gear in the endless machine of the business world, turning and grinding for the sake of a society too abstract to be loved, too vast to be seen, and eventually wearing away into a broken, inevitable death. This stupid course was just another tiny step toward death. Ken's pen scratched to an unpleasant halt as he was stricken into paralysis by these thoughts.

Reflex alone made him stand up when the final bell rang. Habit made him collect his books and tuck them away next to his laptop in his briefcase, and move out of the school. Routine guided his steps along the sidewalk as he walked home. All around him the world moved on in blissful ignorance, happy in its stupidity, its non-realization of the uselessness of it all. Once, Ken would have called them insects; he now observed that that was an apt label, although without the rancor that would once have accompanied the denigration. Like a giant hive of insects, the city buzzed with activity that went nowhere, that served nothing grander than itself. Each member of the hive made up reasons for doing what it had been brainwashed into thinking it needed to do: family, honor, success, prestige. But in the end, they all just died and what use were those things in the grave? Bitterly, Ken wished he were as stupid as the rest of them. Failing that, he wished he were religious, so he could take solace in some sort of afterlife, or reincarnation, some promise that made it all _mean_ something. But his family's half-hearted attempts to introduce him to Shinto and Buddhism had long since been discarded by the practical boy, all the precepts of these faiths ripped into tiny, rational pieces by an intellect that refused to deceive itself.

Self-deception. Ken saw now that self-deception was going to be necessary in order to find any meaning in life. But when he threw off the Kaizer, he had promised himself never to resort to such things again ... look where self-deception had led him last time!

He craned his head back to look up at the buildings. So many people, crammed into so small a space. Millions of them, and Ken would be willing to bet almost none of them knew the futility of life. All of them, moved by the drives programmed into their genes to reproduce, all unknowing of why they undertook any of it. Unknowing of the reasons behind everything, because there was _no_ reason behind _anything._ Buildings and structures eventually crumbled to dust, just like their builders. Human memory was fickle and limited, and even those few who would be remembered by history wouldn't profit from it. They were just as dead as the forgotten billions. And then, someday, the sun itself would explode and take Earth out entirely, and that would be the end of it. Ken knew that whether he died today or a hundred years from now, it wouldn't matter in the end. It just didn't matter.

His feet took him safely into his apartment building. Ken, not wanting to share close proximity with someone in the elevator, certain that he would be able to smell death on whoever came near him, turned toward the stairs instead. He supposed it was survival instinct that made it all possible. If, in order to live long enough to reproduce, one needed to convince oneself that there was a meaning in life, then most people would do that. It was simple natural selection.

All too soon, Ken found himself on his own floor, and he dragged himself the last few meters home. Once there, however, he got the second disagreeable revelation of his day.

"I'm home, Mama," he called, slipping out of his shoes. He tried to keep the empty despair in his heart out of his voice; his mother didn't need any more worries out of him. After a moment she appeared out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dishtowel, and the pensive look on her face gradually wormed its way through Ken's black mood. "What's wrong?" he said finally.

"Ken," she said hesitantly, and then let a long pause pass before continuing. "Ken, I heard today that a few days ago you were seen kissing a boy."

Wonderful. Ken hadn't thought his attitude could swing any lower, but he'd been wrong. Something akin to dread clenched an icy claw in his belly, filling the emptiness with something even worse. He walked toward his room with the intention of putting his books and laptop away, which coincidentally took him farther away from his mother. "I wasn't kissing him, Mama. He was kissing me, and I was just standing there." No point in denying it entirely. One of the many, many downsides to fame was that his mother eventually heard about whatever he did.

She followed him into his room, the dishtowel still between her hands, held like a security blanket. "It's true then?"

"It's true that he kissed me, not that I kissed him back." But oh, how _hard_ it had been not to! How Ken had wanted to take Daisuke into his arms and never let go, but instead he'd kept his hands at his sides and closed his eyes to block out the pain in Daisuke's eyes. He may as well have shoved Daisuke away with both hands and given him a few lashes with the whip for good measure. Ken's unwillingness to pursue a relationship with Daisuke had hurt the other boy in ways Ken couldn't even begin to comprehend, but that was turning into a trend now, wasn't it? Seemed like he couldn't get within a kilometer of Daisuke without hurting him. The same old tendencies never quite went away, did they? If Ken was in pain, and Ken was _always_ in pain, then he just had to make sure someone else shared his misery ... wasn't that the way it worked? Sometimes he disgusted himself.

Besides, he understood now how little it all mattered. Daisuke was doomed, just like the rest of the human race and all its works.

"Ken, honey ... you just can't _do_ things like that," his mother said, wringing her hands beneath the dishtowel. "If the tabloid reporters get hold of something like this ..."

With a savagery that Ken didn't intend, but which he couldn't stop, he slammed down his briefcase on his desk and said, "What was I supposed to do, hit him? _What do you expect out of me?"_

She flinched. Ken instantly felt guilty for his burst of temper and looked away, letting his hair hide his face. He knew that she was trying to protect him, but he also knew that there was more to it than that. He had no doubt whatsoever that when his father got home from work, he'd get yet another lecture. In the past two years or so, they had practically become a family tradition.

In a small voice, his mother said, "You know we love you, Ken. But you have to see all sides of the matter, not just your own."

"I know," said Ken, all anger gone, leaving him feeling deflated and more empty than before. "I'm sorry, I had no right to say that."

She hugged him, and he stood stiffly for it, his face still averted so she wouldn't see how upset he was. His mother said something about dinner that he didn't listen to, and then she took herself and her dishtowel back into the kitchen. Ken shut the door behind her.

As soon as the door was closed, there was movement from the dusty place atop a shelf of books. So that's where Wormmon had gone.

"Ken-chan?" said the Digimon softly.

"Yeah, I'm here." Ken opened his briefcase and started to scatter his homework across his desk. He wondered if he'd be able to find the energy to do it, between his mother's disapproval and knowing as he did now how unimportant it all was.

"Why were you angry? What did your mother say that was bad?"

"Nothing. I don't know why I was angry. I didn't have any right to be." He fell into the computer chair, telling himself that this was true, hoping to make it so. He ran his hand partway through his hair, feeling the urge to tear out a handful. "I'm being irrational," he observed, surprised by how calmly this came out.

Wormmon crept down off the shelf, onto the top of the computer monitor, and thence down to the desk. He looked up at Ken with those soulful eyes that articulated so very much emotion, more than most humans seemed capable of expressing. Right now, they were full of understanding and compassion, and it was suddenly too much for Ken. He pulled Wormmon up into his arms, biting down tears as he buried his face in the top of Wormmon's head.

"It's nothing she said," he whispered. "It's me, it's all me."

"What is?"

"There's something _wrong_ with me. I shouldn't be this way."

The round Digimon body wiggled a little, and two pairs of legs closed around Ken's forearm. It was a weak sort of hug, awkward because of the position Wormmon was in, but it was touching that he would try. The dread shredding Ken's intestines let up slightly, letting the desolation back in. "There's nothing wrong with you," said Wormmon. "You're perfect just the way you are."

"But I'm not perfect, that's the whole problem. I ..." How to explain this to a Digimon, for whom love was the bond between digital partners, and for whom sex was an undefined word? "With humans, boys are supposed to ... like, girls, and vice versa. Because when they grow up, they're supposed to marry each other." Ken frowned at himself. "Like my parents. One boy is supposed to marry and live with one girl, so they can have children together."

He paused, certain that if Wormmon didn't understand, he'd speak up now. Nothing was forthcoming, so Ken plowed on ahead. "But I'm different. I don't like girls that way. I mean, I can be friends with them, but I don't want to marry one."

"Oh," said Wormmon, and although the tone of his voice was uncomprehending, his next words proved that he'd picked up at least part of what Ken was trying to say. "Is this why you were touching Daisuke when he came over that one time?"

"Yes. I shouldn't have done that. Daisuke is a boy like me. Boys aren't supposed to do that to other boys." He held Wormmon tightly, and felt a bit guilty for wishing Wormmon were Daisuke.

"He makes you happy, though. You said you loved him. What's wrong with that?"

"Nothing. Everything. It's so hard to explain."

He could feel Wormmon's antennae flicking lightly across his damp cheek. "Ken-chan ... don't cry. I'm trying to understand, really."

"I know. It's not you." There was nothing Wormmon could do. As much as the little Digimon might want to help him, Ken knew that there was nothing anybody could do. There was no comfort here, so he may as well stop upsetting his partner. "I'll be all right. Don't worry about me." He gave Wormmon a final hug and set him on the floor.

Without looking, he knew that Wormmon remained there at his feet, gazing up at him, for some time before moving off to a more comfortable perching spot on the bed. He made a show of spreading out his homework and attempting to work on it, although he couldn't concentrate any more than he'd been able to at school.

Daisuke. Daisuke haunted him. If he closed his eyes and allowed himself to think about it, he could recall with perfect clarity the feel of Daisuke's hands on his shoulders, Daisuke's body moving beneath him, the taste of Daisuke's lips. He could conjure up a mental image of Daisuke with little effort, perfect to the last detail, from the confident stance of his feet to the goggles, charming in their ridiculousness, atop his head. He could hear the sound of Daisuke's voice as he spoke Ken's name, sometimes with that fringe of irreverent laughter that edged everything he did, sometimes with an aura of anger.

How often had he watched Daisuke on the monitors back in his fortress, furious that the red-haired boy dared defy him? How often had he worked out intricate, devious plans for revenge, only to drop them when he realized that Daisuke hadn't really done anything yet, realized the foolishness of wasting the time necessary to punish the boy for crimes yet to be committed? He'd never put much thought into the rage he harbored especially for Daisuke, never wondered why Daisuke infuriated him so when the other four Digi-Destined were considered only minor annoyances. They'd all worked together, after all, always been together. So why had he been so much _angrier_ at Daisuke than the others? Without Ken even asking himself this question, it had been answered for him. As the Kaizer, he had raged instinctively against the idea that he needed someone exactly like Daisuke in his life, someone who could brighten the shadows in his soul and lift the dark veil over his emotions. The fact that he was a boy, and that the Kaizer had managed to firmly suppress his unwanted, emerging homosexuality, only made the animosity greater.

He understood himself so much better now. He wished he didn't, but he did. He felt drawn toward Daisuke, and Daisuke was someone he knew he could grow to love deeply. That Daisuke seemed to reciprocate should have made things easier.

Instead, it made things so much worse. If Daisuke had hated him, or refused to forgive him, or even if Daisuke had wanted to be just his friend and nothing more, then Ken could have resorted to a distant longing. He could have hidden his feelings in a small manila folder, and filed them under the heading "Things That Cannot Be." He could have dealt with that, as the latest in a long series of tragedies and disappointments that together defined his life. Ken thought he knew by now how to handle heartache.

_Is that it?_ he wondered, as he stared blankly at his open history textbook. _Do I really buy into my parents' wishes, or is it simply that I don't know how to be happy, so I must turn my only chance at happiness into misery?_ He didn't know, and really wasn't certain he wanted to know, because he suspected he knew the answer already. And that would be just one more fault added onto his character, one more action taken for no good reason, in an existence that ultimately led to nothing in the end.

Sounds in the apartment, the front door opening and closing. His father must have come home from work ... was it that late already? Ken glanced at the clock and saw that it was. The cold claw of dread began to gleefully rip away at Ken's insides again. It was only a matter of time now, and in a way the anticipation was worse than the event he knew was coming.

He jumped when a knock sounded at his door; he'd been expecting it, but with practically every nerve aligned to hear it, it startled him anyway. He scrambled to his feet when the door opened, feeling like he was looking down the barrel of a gun. There was no gun, though. Just his father's face, peering in at him.

"Ken," said his father, "could you come out here? We'd like to talk to you."

Ken had done a lot of difficult things in his life, but walking out to face one of these periodic chats with his parents ranked up there with the worst of them. It bothered him greatly to feel himself starting to go numb inside, as if he'd swallowed a bucket of ice. He recognized this as one of the things he associated with the Kaizer ... this ability to shut down, to stop caring in order to stop hurting. He desperately didn't want to do anything that reminded him of the Kaizer, but at the same time, he didn't want to be emotionally flayed alive.

In this twisted state of indecision, Ken emerged from the hallway and perched on the edge of a chair. His parents looked at one another and didn't say anything at first. Ken distantly guessed that something disturbing must have shown on his face, and he had a moment to hope that they'd give up and leave him alone. No such luck, however.

"You know we love you, son," said his father. The way they always started these little talks. Reassure him that he meant the world to them, just before cutting him apart with their disapproval. "We've tried to go easy on you lately, too. But your mother tells me that you were kissing a boy the other day?"

Ken was quite sure that if he looked in a mirror right then, he'd find himself white as paper. "I wasn't kissing him. He kissed me." It was the truth, and the only defense he had.

His father had the grace to look uncomfortable. "You know this isn't easy for us." Ken had his doubts that it was all that much more difficult on them than it was on him, but he held his peace on this point. "But, Ken ... you're the only son we have left. If Osamu were still here, you know we'd support you in whatever choice you decided to make. It would be his duty to carry on the family name and all that."

"I just want grandchildren, Ken," said his mother, sounding so brokenhearted that it cracked the ice closing around Ken's heart. "Is that too much to ask?"

He just looked at them both, not knowing what to say that he hadn't already said a thousand times before. When would they accept that he wasn't making a _choice_ here? Any more than they had when they'd fallen in love with each other? Never?

There was a long, uneasy silence before his father spoke again. "If Osamu were still here, we wouldn't mind. Really. But he isn't."

_And it's your fault he isn't. You owe us._ The weight of the unspoken words was terrible, and threatened to demolish what little remained of Ken's self-control. Something of this must have shown in his expression, because his mother suddenly got up and gave him a hug, which of course made complete hash of Ken's restraint.

Clinging to his mother, his face hidden in her shoulder so they wouldn't see the tears in his eyes, he said, "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I don't want to be like this! I didn't want him to kiss me, I swear!" Don't mention that the reason he didn't want to be kissed was because he'd been afraid of his resolve being damaged, rather than because he disliked kissing Daisuke. "I never wanted to turn into any of these things!" He could tick them off in his mind like a grocery list of sins ... a torturer, a murderer, a slaver, an evil monster, the thing that gave reborn Digimon nightmares, killer of his brother, breaker of Daisuke's heart, homosexual. Aside from the known last, things he could never tell his parents, things that would make them hate him if they knew. None of these were things he could change. None of them. No matter how much he might want it, no matter how much he might pretend otherwise.

"It's all right if you're not perfect," said his mother soothingly. If she only knew ... "Nobody's quite perfect anyway. It's only one thing we ask, one simple thing." One simple thing that he couldn't provide.

"You haven't seen this boy since then, have you?" asked his father.

Not looking up, Ken shook his head against his mother's shoulder. It felt so good to be held like that, as if he were just a little boy again and Mama would make everything all right. He wished so much that she could make this all right. As much as he used to deny it, as much as he hated himself for it, he wanted his parents' approval. He wanted to make them happy. He wanted them to love him.

Damn, he was so fucked up. He hated himself for this as well. He wished he could be what they wanted him to be, and the fact that this goal was unattainable tore at him so much. He could never be their perfect son. He had already tried once, and failed miserably. At the ripe old age of eleven years old, he was already a miserable failure at everything important.

His mother let him go, smoothed his hair away from his face and gave him a sad little smile. Her hand on his forehead was cool, not warm the way Daisuke's were. "We'll always love you, no matter what."

Then why did they keep making these demands on him? They had said they would stop, but they hadn't. Only the type of demand changed. He still wasn't good enough for them.

"Could I be excused then?" he asked.

His mother glanced at his father, and then nodded. Ken got to his feet and retreated to his room. There, he received the day's third and final nasty revelation.

Wormmon was asleep on the bed, and didn't wake when Ken came in and closed the door. Sinking into the desk chair again, Ken sorted through his homework with the intention of doing at least some of it. The act of sorting, however, felt like enough after he was finished, and he ended up just sitting there, staring at it, unable to force himself to actually do it. After perhaps five minutes, he admitted that he wasn't going to do his homework just yet, and switched on his computer monitor. The computer itself stayed on most of the time.

The last thing he'd been looking at was the old Digiworld battle map, so it was still displayed when the monitor warmed up. The night before, he'd been trying to calculate exactly how many control spires were actually left, taking into account his best guess on how many the Digi-Destined had destroyed, and how many himself and Wormmon had destroyed. Looking at the battle map now, Ken considered taking himself to the digital world; if he was busy fighting, he might actually succeed in not thinking for awhile. Yep, that seemed like a good idea. It might even succeed in making him feel less like the freakish, pointless failure that he was. He sorted through his briefcase for his Digivice, the words that would wake Wormmon and send them on their way on the tip of his tongue.

However, when he actually found the Digivice, he remained silent. It came out of his briefcase as black as ever, resting in his hand like a demon's heart. He could still vaguely remember when it was white and ordinary, and he distinctly recalled the feel of it writhing in his hand as it morphed into this black-and-gray reflection of his own inner self. This had been the source of most of his power, and there had been a certain grim rightness to the fact that his Digivice was so dark while the Digivices belonging to the Digi-Destined were mostly white and brightly colored. Their Digivices were much like the children themselves, designed to shine in the sunlight, while his own was made to conceal itself in shadow. The symbolism had appealed to the Kaizer enormously, and he'd thrown his whole heart into living up to it.

Wormmon's death and rebirth had also been a sort of rebirth for Ken, though, and the day after Ken returned home with Leafmon he had half expected to wake up and find that his Digivice had changed color. It hadn't. He accepted now that it probably never would.

But didn't that mean something?

He knew, then, why he kept turning down Daisuke's offers to join up with the other Digi-Destined. It wasn't, as he had thought before, because it would be too painful to be so close to Daisuke so frequently, when he dared not permit himself to touch. It definitely wasn't the reasons he'd given openly, that he felt it was his responsibility to correct his own mistakes, that he didn't want to cause a schism in the group by his presence. Although all of these were true, the real reason was that he couldn't contaminate their righteous purity with his murdering self. There would always be a part of him that was capable of casual killing, a part that would always take pleasure in the suffering of another.

This is what the Digivice was telling him by its stubborn refusal to change color. Ken knew it told the truth; it wouldn't take very much for him to become the Digimon Kaizer once again, just a little self-deception, a little channeling of sadness and loneliness into anger and hate. He would never fully rid himself of the Kaizer, those aspects of his personality would never go completely away. A cold shudder gripped him, and the darkening room seemed to close in on him, making him feel like a tiny mote in a vast, bleak universe.

Which was all, in the end, that he actually was.

Acknowledgement : Thanks to herongale for proofreading the first draft and offering some excellent insight. I owe you.

   [1]: http://www.fanfiction.net/index.fic?action=story-read&storyid=152708
   [2]: http://www.fanfiction.net/index.fic?action=story-read&storyid=141008
   [3]: http://www.fanfiction.net/index.fic?action=story-read&storyid=134829



	5. Chapter Five - Sine (Daisuke)

Daisuke was already in bed asleep when the phone call came, and so was everyone else in his family. This normally wouldn't have presented a problem, since there _was_ an answering service to accept calls that came in when nobody was home or inclined to pick up the phone, but this particular caller was very persistent. The phone kept ringing for ten minutes until Daisuke's sister finally woke up and answered it.

Irritated that it was neither a life-or-death emergency nor for herself, she was not gentle in waking Daisuke. "Wake up," she said, kicking the side of his bed until the snores stopped and her brother muttered something that might have been "go away."

"No, there's a call for you and you're going to take it." She kicked the bed again. Under other circumstances, Jun wouldn't have been this short with Daisuke, but it was almost one in the morning and she'd been up late the night before chatting with some of her friends over the Internet. She was tired and annoyed and just wanted to get the phone into her brother's hands and out of her own. He rolled over and pulled the covers over his head, so she grabbed the blanket and yanked it off him entirely; one of his stuffed animals fell on the floor and squeaked. "Get up and take this, I'm not playing with you."

Daisuke swore and gave her a sleepy glare, no more pleased to be awake at this hour than she was. "What are you talking about?" He rubbed his eyes and sat up a little.

"Phone call. For you. Take it." She shoved the phone into his hand and turned to leave, her mission accomplished. The door shut behind her.

Daisuke stared at the handset for a moment, wondering who on earth could be calling him at this hour. He lifted the phone to his ear and said, "Moshi moshi?"

_"Daisuke?"_ came the excited reply.

"Um ... yeah, who's this?" Daisuke squinted to make out the numbers on the clock.

_"It's Ken. I didn't wake you, did I?"_

Shit, it was ten 'til one. His brain still playing catch-up, Daisuke next started to hunt around the bed for Chibimon. "Yeah, kinda. What's up?" Chibimon was quickly located on the floor, under the blanket Jun had torn off him to wake him up. The little Digimon looked indignant and offended, and Daisuke rubbed the top of his head to apologize.

_"Sorry. What time is it? I forgot to check. Damn, I'm sorry, I didn't know it was this late. I'll let you get back to sleep."_ Ken sounded disappointed, but not too much so.

"No, no, it's fine. I'm awake now. What's wrong?" Yawning, Daisuke rearranged the covers atop himself and let Chibimon crawl up onto his stomach.

"Who is it?" asked Chibimon quietly, his indignation assuaged.

"Ken," mouthed Daisuke. Chibimon's ears pricked up with interest and he bounced on Daisuke's tummy.

"Lemme talk to him!"

_"Nothing's wrong,"_ Ken was saying in the meantime. _"I just wanted to talk. Is that Chibimon?"_

"Yeah, he wants to say hi," Daisuke managed to say before his Digimon wrested the phone from his grasp. "Okay, okay, here, don't rip my arm off."

"Moshi moshi!" said Chibimon into the phone, proudly. After watching Daisuke talk on the phone a few times, Chibimon had been anxious to try it for himself for several weeks, but the opportunity had never come up before. "I'm fine. I was having a nice dream but Daisuke's sister woke me up. Uh huh, I was dreaming about being Paildramon and saving Daisuke from evil spire Digimon! It was fun! Really? That's neat! What did Wormmon say?"

Daisuke watched Chibimon eagerly chatter away, wondering what had possessed Ken to call him at one in the morning, just to talk. Ken hadn't been exactly friendly ever since what Daisuke was starting to privately call the "jogress incident"; he hadn't been _un_friendly, per se, but Ken had clearly been less thrilled with the idea of Paildramon than Daisuke was. Ken had been keeping his distance from Daisuke, drawing back whenever Daisuke made any kind of overture toward him, no matter how innocent. It had taken him a little while, but Daisuke had finally accepted that Ken was never going to want to kiss him again. It hurt some, but it hurt more that Ken didn't seem capable of being around him at all and avoided him whenever possible.

He understood that Ken perceived him as dangerous, that Ken didn't trust himself to be near Daisuke without doing something extreme. He understood it, but he didn't have to like it. Especially after hearing the slow beat of Ken's heart just before Exveemon and Stingmon jogressed together ... in the past few days, Daisuke sometimes imagined that he could hear it beating still, keeping time with his own.

The phone handset suddenly looked different to Daisuke. It was a portal that could connect him, no matter how remotely, to Ken, and Chibimon was hoarding it for himself. "Come on, give it back now," he said, poking Chibimon in the shoulder.

"Daisuke wants to talk now," said Chibimon. "He really likes you. Uh-huh! Sometimes he says your name in his sleep ... Hey!" Daisuke snatched the phone out of Chibimon's paws with a glare.

"Don't tell him that!" He rolled Chibimon across the blanket with his hand, scowling at the giggling little Digimon while he raised the phone back up. "Sorry about that, Ken."

_"It's okay,"_ said Ken, sounding like he was about to break down into laughter. This changed his voice considerably, and if Daisuke hadn't already known who was on the other end, he wouldn't have recognized the voice. _"He's cute. Just like you."_

Blinking, Daisuke felt his neck and ears prickle. "What?"

_"I said you're cute, just like Chibi is. Hey, want to do something tomorrow after school?"_

Daisuke just sat there for a moment, staring at the dark wall of his room. Then he said, "Okay, who are you and what did you do with Ichijouji Ken?"

Ken giggled. Daisuke's jaw dropped further open. _"That's funny! No, it's me, I just couldn't sleep. I was thinking about the mechanics of jogress evolution and I think I figured it out, so I started to write a paper about it. Then I thought I really ought to ask Wormmon, but he was no help, so we talked about other things instead and it turns out that time in the Digiworld used to move differently than it does now. Did you know that?"_

"Um ... no ... " Daisuke wasn't sure he was keeping up with the free-association flow coming through the telephone. Ken was talking a mile a minute as if hyped up on something, and miscellaneous little sounds came through the phone line as if the other boy were pacing and fidgeting around his room while he spoke. This was just too weird.

_"Well, yeah, it did, time in the Digiworld used to move a lot faster than time in the real world. But now they move at the same rate, and Wormmon didn't know why. Well, he didn't really know that time used be different there at all, I kinda had to infer that from other things, but I'll spare you the details. It actually makes more sense for time to move faster there than for it to move at the same rate as here, after all it should only be restricted by the clock speeds of the main servers the digital world is based upon, and you know those things are probably moving at the speed of light. I put up the question on a Usenet group earlier this evening but nobody's replied. Maybe I didn't phrase it right, though, I don't think I sound very intelligent when I try to write in English. Maybe we should meet somewhere and talk about this, you free?"_

"Ken ..." said Daisuke, worried now. "It's one AM. Yes, I'm free, but I'm not going anywhere."

_"Oh yeah. Damn. You don't have a computer there either, do you?"_

"No." Not that Daisuke could use anyway. "Are you okay?"

Ken laughed. _"Of course I'm okay!"_

Unconvinced, Daisuke said, "Are you sure? You sound really strange, this isn't like you at all."

_"No, really, I'm fine. I just get like this sometimes. I can't sleep, that's all. It's nothing to worry about. I started designing a computer game today, I'm going to turn it in for extra credit in my C++ class. Want to beta test it for me in a few days?"_

"I guess. Doesn't it take longer than a few days to write a whole game though?"

_"Nah, I'll get most of the base code out tonight and tomorrow, and I have a bunch of interface code I can pull in from other programs that I never finished. Then it's just writing the plot itself and debugging. Tell you what, you can help me out with that. I know I've been avoiding you lately, and I'm sorry, I want to make it up to you."_

"Huh?" Daisuke glanced at the clock. He was having more and more difficulty keeping up with Ken; the sudden changes in subject left him reeling. At least Ken didn't seem to mind that Daisuke wasn't holding up his end of the conversation.

_"It's not that I was avoiding you, really, I was just avoiding everything. I couldn't deal with it all, but I can now so it's okay. I'm sorry about everything I said to you before, about how I couldn't see you anymore. Everything was just getting to me, and I couldn't deal with it with you there. Every time I see you I want to touch you so bad and it's distracting. Man, I wish you had a computer there, I'd be over there in under a minute."_

Unable to believe what he was hearing, Daisuke couldn't come up with a reply to that before Ken started off again. Chibimon, tired again now that he'd had his adventure with the telephone, snuggled down into the blankets in Daisuke's lap and went back to sleep.

_"I wish I had a picture of you or something. Or a video, that'd be better. I doubt a still photo does you justice, there's just something in the way you move that I can't resist. Want to get together after school tomorrow?"_

"Sure," said Daisuke automatically. Then : "You are really starting to worry me, Ken. You didn't eat a whole bowl of sugar or something, did you?"

_"Of course not. I told you, I just get like this sometimes. I'm fine, I'm fine, don't be worried."_ He laughed, and Daisuke had to admit that it was a very nice sound, even filtered through the telephone. _"I'll see you tomorrow then, okay? Meet me at the soccer field in the park. Dream about me? I know I'd dream about you if I could get to sleep."_ An odd sound filled Daisuke's ear, and it took him a few moments to figure out that Ken was kissing into the phone. Before he could recover from the shock of this, Ken had hung up.

Daisuke turned the phone off and set it slowly down on the floor, as if it were a viper that might bite his hand if he moved too quickly. "That was the strangest conversation I've ever had," he said quietly. "Was that really Ken? It sounded like Ken, sort of. I've never heard Ken _giggle,_ though. I didn't know he could."

"Go to sleep," said Chibimon, grumpy again now that his hyper spell was over. Daisuke patted him and rearranged the blankets, settling down to get back to sleep. It was a long time before sleep actually took him, though; his mind kept replaying Ken's words over and over, trying to figure out what was wrong with the other boy to make him act so differently than he usually did.

------======*======------

The next afternoon found Daisuke hurrying toward his appointment with Ken at the park soccer field just after school let out. He was worried at first that he wouldn't be able to find Ken, but it turned out to be quite easy - all Daisuke had to do was follow the crowds. Ken had somehow arrived before Daisuke, and had attracted a small army of admirers already. Most were children younger than he was, wanting soccer balls autographed and wanting Ken's attention while they showed off their best moves for him. Mixed in with the younger children were some girls around Ken's and Daisuke's age, chatting quietly with each other and sometimes concealing giggles behind their hands.

Ken offered the younger children all the attention they could possibly want, and was at least as hyper as they were, dressed in his Tamachi soccer team uniform and chasing an impromptu game around the field. Daisuke stopped at the edge of the field; over the course of the day, he'd managed to convince himself that the strangeness of the midnight conversation had been an artifact of the late hour and his own tiredness, that Ken hadn't _really_ been talking that rapidly and jumping wildly from topic to topic. Yet Ken looked now the way he'd sounded the night before, restless, on top of absolutely everything, practically a blur of energy.

"This is unreal," said Daisuke, setting his book bag down on the ground. "Hey, Chibi?"

"Yeah?" came the muffled reply from within the bag.

"Do me a favor, would you? If you see Wormmon, ask him what's wrong with Ken."

"Sure thing!" chirped Chibimon, and the bag crinkled as the Digimon peered out. "He looks fine to me, though."

Ken was demonstrating a particularly deft pass to his audience, and in the process attempting to teach it to one of the kids. There was nothing innately _wrong_ about the way Ken looked, Daisuke had to admit that. The only thing unnatural about it was the fact that it was so far out of character for Ken to act this way. In Daisuke's mind, Ken was shrouded, dark, quiet, and filled with deep silences. The boy out in the field was none of these things as he cheerfully played with children two and three years his junior.

Walking out into the field, Daisuke navigated around clumps of girls who ignored him in favor of the much more famous Ichijouji Ken. Ken didn't notice him at first, but did when Daisuke called his name and waved.

If Ken had looked lively and happy before, he went practically radiant upon spotting Daisuke. "Daisuke!" he called, and ran over to meet Daisuke halfway, trailed by the pack of children. Daisuke felt like a spotlight had suddenly turned on him, as all the girls looked at him as well. Ken grabbed his hand and dragged him further out into the field. "Come on and play. This is Motomiya Daisuke," said Ken to the attentive children. "He _almost_ beat me once."

"Hey, I could have if you didn't have your whole team with you." Daisuke grinned. Ken's brilliant mood was contagious, and Daisuke's doubts were starting to burn away.

"Yeah? Well, I don't now, so here's your chance to prove it." Ken gave him a sly little smile and a half-wink, and a moment later both Ken and the soccer ball had shot past Daisuke toward the goal behind him. Children cheered and they all ran to catch up with Ken.

By dusk, it ended up that Ken won by a single goal, which Daisuke put down to dumb luck and took with equanimity. With the last of the younger children being carted off home by their parents, Daisuke and Ken were left almost alone in this corner of the park; only a few of the older girls were left, and they were making a show of not looking openly at the two boys.

Daisuke was tired but not overly so - it was the pleasant tiredness of having honestly worked off his habitual overflow of energy that usually kept him so fidgety. He threw himself down into the grass at the edge of the field next to his book bag, peered inside to see if Chibimon was there (he wasn't), and then he laid down on his back to cool off.

However, Ken's afterburners still seemed to be engaged. Despite the fact that he probably got little or no sleep the night before, he was practically bouncing as he went over to his own duffel bag. "Hey, Daisuke, what's your Digimon doing in my bag?" he called.

"I don't know," replied Daisuke. "Why don't you ask him?"

"I would but he's sleeping on Wormmon. Come look, Dai, they're so cute!"

_Cute_ was not one of those words Daisuke expected to hear out of Ken, especially when applied to a Digimon, yet this was the third time Ken had said it. Daisuke frowned and sat up. "Okay, Ken, what's the matter with you? Why are you acting like this?"

"I don't know. I just do from time to time. Want to get something to eat? Oh, here." He frisbeed something white that struck Daisuke in the chest. Fumbling to catch it, Daisuke discovered a stapled stack of paper.

"What's this?"

"My essay on jogress evolution. I was going to turn it into my biology class for credit, but Wormmon convinced me that wouldn't be a good idea. So, you hungry or what?"

"Yeah, sure," said Daisuke absently, flipping through the pages. It was full of terms like "non-amalgamation" and "fission of vinculum." "Does this come with a translation?"

Ken laughed and picked up his duffel bag, hefting it over his shoulder. One of the Digimon inside muttered a sleepy protest. "You're so silly. Come on, let's go, I'm buying. Do you need to call your mom?"

"Nah." Daisuke stood up and brushed himself off. "She'd just tell me to come home for dinner and yell at me for not being home sooner."

Ken's face fell and he said, "Oh. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to get you in trouble!"

"Don't worry about it." Daisuke picked up his books and grinned, tucking the sheaf of paper inside the bag. "I'm always in trouble."

"You sure?" Ken looked genuinely concerned, and Daisuke remembered that aside from the Kaizer thing, Ken was always such a good boy, who probably never broke a window or got detention in his life. Being yelled at would probably cause his world to come crashing down, whereas it was nothing new to Daisuke.

"Yeah, I'm sure. If I don't call her, she can't say no, so let's just go."

"Okay." Pleased again, Ken led the way, chattering as he went. "I got almost half the base code for that game written last night after I hung up with you, so it's time to start thinking about what the plot should be like, so I can start coding that in. Tell me what you think of this."

Daisuke listened with growing incredulity as Ken spun him a rather strange little epic set in shogunate Japan, involving two young common-born boys who ran away from home and ended up masquerading as samurai in China, with the climactic battle saving the life of the Chinese Emperor from invading Mongols. Daisuke, having only the loosest grasp of his own country's history, much less that of China, agreed that it sounded cool and was talked into helping Ken with the dialogue.

As the sidewalk passed through a stand of trees, Ken suddenly shoved Daisuke aside. Taken completely by surprise, Daisuke stumbled into a tree, and was yanked around behind it, and a moment later he found Ken's arms around him and Ken's lips on his.

"W-what ..."

"Shhh," whispered Ken just before drawing him into a consuming kiss. Daisuke felt a hand slide up under his shirt and whimpered in shock, even as his body reacted enthusiastically by pulling Ken closer and hooking a leg around the back of Ken's knee. Their book bags went down onto the ground, and there were complaints from Wormmon and Chibimon.

_What is wrong with him? This is **not** normal, no matter what he says. This isn't normal for anyone, much less him._

This was the last thing to go through Daisuke's mind for awhile, though. Ken's touch was fiery, his kiss wild and savage, and Daisuke had been wanting it for quite some time; he wasn't about to squander what might be his only opportunity to hold and kiss the only boy he loved. Nothing tainted the clean, liquid taste of Ken's mouth, nothing stood between them except their clothes, and that was remedied somewhat by each boy putting his hands up the other's shirt. Faintly, Daisuke could hear the low murmur of Ken's heartbeat, feel Ken's pulse flutter rapidly beneath his fingertips, and he would have sworn that his own was keeping the same pace.

An eternity later, Ken withdrew from the kiss, leaning hard against Daisuke and panting in Daisuke's ear. Daisuke turned his head to inhale the scent of Ken's hair and stale sweat left over from the soccer match. Because it was _Ken's_ sweat, it smelled wonderful.

"Mmm," moaned Ken softly. "I _love_ you. Do you understand that?"

"Uh huh," whispered Daisuke breathlessly. He would have agreed to anything Ken said at this point.

"I don't care if my parents disapprove. I don't care if they hate me forever. I love to be near you, I love to touch you." Ken's head moved, and an instant later Daisuke felt teeth come playfully down on his neck.

Daisuke gasped, but in spite of his pleasure at having Ken chew on him, part of that statement disturbed him. "Huh?" he said after a bit of thought. "What was that about your parents?"

Ken pulled back enough to look Daisuke in the eye. It was starting to become seriously dark, turning Ken's eyes into black pools. "My mother and father don't approve of me."

"Why not?"

A light shrug. "I'm supposed to carry on the family name and all that. You know, get married, have children, the whole deal. They don't approve of me being gay because that means I won't do any of that stuff. But enough about that. Let's go!" And just like that, Ken took up his duffel bag in one hand and grabbed Daisuke's wrist in the other. Daisuke barely had enough time to catch up his own books before Ken hauled him back out to the sidewalk.

"Up and down and up and down, make up your minds," said Chibimon, a little crossly. Ken laughed, and then began to talk again, keeping up a constant flow of conversation that was completely one-sided, but Ken didn't seem to even notice, much less mind.

It had never occurred to Daisuke to wonder what his parents would think of him dating a boy. He wasn't supposed to be dating _anyone_ until he was fifteen, but that rule, like all other parental edicts, was made to be broken. Even so, he felt it would be best if he kept this a secret as long as possible, but Daisuke didn't think that would be too difficult. After all, he'd kept Chibimon a secret, and Chibimon's existence as an animate creature would be a lot tougher to explain than Ken's presence. His parents would probably be ecstatic that he was friends with someone like Ken, and look no further than that. All he had to do was keep from kissing Ken in front of them.

"Hey, are you listening?" asked Ken, nudging Daisuke out of these thoughts. Which was a good thing, since Daisuke realized that he was spending valuable time with Ken thinking about his parents.

"Yeah," he lied. "Where are we going anyway?"

"I don't care. Let's just get some take-out or something and go sit somewhere. There's a sushi bar not too far from here, we could get something there, unless you're allergic."

"I'm not," said Daisuke.

"Did you hear about that guy a few years ago who wrote a whole book full of haikus about sushi? He covered everything from the tuna boats through the auction and how to tell good tuna from bad tuna and how to cut it and make the rice, I mean he covered _everything,_ down to the last painful detail. I'm surprised you never heard of him, he was all over the news with this book, that was right about the time my brother died. Hey! Look at that!"

Daisuke found himself staring at Ken's back as the other boy pelted off, covering the last few meters to the edge of the park and then crossing the street toward a magazine stand. Sorting through the newspapers, magazines, and a wide assortment of manga and doujinshi, Ken pulled out the latest issues of several manga and started to flip through them while Daisuke approached at a slightly more normal pace.

Despite the almost frightening level of activity that Ken was exhibiting, Daisuke decided that he liked Ken this way. It was a vast improvement over the moping and self-pity, and no matter how beautiful Ken was while hating himself (and Ken was _very_ beautiful while hating himself), Daisuke decided now that he preferred him happy. Ken had said that this was typical for him; Daisuke wondered what could have triggered it.

"Hey, do you read any of these?" Ken asked, displaying the array of manga he'd chosen.

Looking them over, Daisuke shook his head. "Nope."

"Oh. Well, pick out a couple and I'll get them for you. I think you'd like some of these though, I'll let you borrow them when I'm done. This one, this one, it has these demons in it that look, I swear to you, exactly like Airdramon. It's almost scary. Let me find one." He licked his index finger and started to page rapidly through the book.

The guy manning the stand had been peering suspiciously at Ken and Daisuke while they talked, and when Ken started to brutalize the manga in question he spoke up. "Hey, you want to pay for that before you rip the pages out?"

Ken's fingers stopped dead, and he looked up at the man with a deep frown. "Excuse me?" he demanded. "Are you implying that I'm _not_ going to pay for it?"

Recognizing Ken's tone, Daisuke laid a hand lightly on his shoulder. "No, he wasn't saying anything like that."

"I don't want stray kids tearing up my stock," said the man. "Either buy it or leave it alone."

Ken's eyes narrowed, and for just an instant Daisuke was afraid he was going to pull a whip out of somewhere. No whip appeared, however; instead, Ken merely slammed the stack of manga down on the counter and said, "Keep them, then. Come on, Daisuke."

Daisuke had to trot to keep up with Ken's stalking strides. "What was _that_ all about? Are you okay?"

A low growl was the only reply he received. The bag Ken carried opened a little and two Digimon peeked out.

"What's the matter now?" said Chibimon. Wormmon just looked morose, but this seemed to Daisuke to be his normal expression.

"I don't know," said Daisuke. This entire afternoon and evening seemed to have gone by in a whirlwind, a whirlwind named _Ken._ Daisuke briefly entertained a theory that Ken was possessed, or that aliens had somehow taken over his mind, but discarded this idea when he remembered that Ken had kissed him less than fifteen minutes earlier. Demons and aliens might make Ken behave in this bizarre fashion, but Daisuke doubted any alien or demon would want to kiss him. As much as he might believe in himself, he wasn't delusional, and he knew he wasn't exceptionally attractive to anyone.

Ken suddenly stopped and turned around, some of the dark fury gone out of the lines of his face, replaced by quizzical concern. Daisuke almost walked into him. "I bet he just wanted my fingerprints. I should go back and get those books I touched."

"What?" Daisuke stared. "Why would he want your fingerprints?"

"So he can track me, of course." Ken made this sound obvious, and actually started to walk back the way he'd come before Daisuke grabbed his arm to stop him.

"I'm sure he doesn't care about your fingerprints or tracking you or anything like that. This is getting scary, Ken, come on, stop."

For a good thirty seconds, Ken stood still and pondered. Then he said, "You're right, I probably smeared the prints up enough. Nevermind. Let's go eat." Taking Daisuke's hand again, his bright cheer restored, Ken said, "Hey, did I ever tell you about the time I almost fell off the terrace?"

"No," said Daisuke, wondering if he should call Ken's parents and have him taken to a hospital. While Ken related his story, interrupting himself every few sentences as he was reminded of other things, Daisuke gradually relaxed and allowed himself to be soothed by the sound of Ken's voice and the obvious happiness there. Who was he to say if this was really abnormal, after all? Maybe this was Ken's regular state of affairs and his earlier depression was the anomaly. How well did he really know Ken?

Besides, it was nice to spend time with someone who was not only pretty, but cheerful as well. Daisuke was accustomed to being the most energetic person in any given group, and it was an agreeable switch to have someone around who could not only keep up with him, but left him behind.

With a slight mental shrug, Daisuke discarded all his worries and stuck his hands in his pockets, grinning brightly and listening to Ken ramble.

"So that was when my parents bought me the telescope, but of course it's pretty much useless in Tokyo so it's sitting in my closet now. Remind me sometime to show you the pictures I pulled off the Web, they are so amazingly cool, you will not believe things like this actually exist. I was really interested in that for a few months, but I doubt you'd enjoy it, there seemed to be a lot of standing around talking quietly, you'd go nuts. Even I was bored. Okay, you wait here, I'll go in and get us something. Do you care what I get you?"

Daisuke shook his head. "Nope. I'll eat anything."

"Cool. Be back in a minute." Ken ducked into the small corner establishment, leaving his duffel bag and Daisuke outside. Daisuke leaned against the wall and tried to look like he belonged in that spot; there was a steady flow of executives moving in and out of the place, and some of them gave him strange looks.

"Daisuke!" whispered Chibimon from Ken's bag at Daisuke's feet.

"Yeah?"

"Wormmon says he's never seen Ken like this before. He says Ken hasn't slept in almost three days."

"Are you kidding?" Daisuke looked down at the Digimon, ignoring the even stranger looks that he was getting now.

Wormmon wiggled around until he could peek up at Daisuke. "No. Well, he sleeps a little, but not as much as he should. I'd really be worried if he wasn't eating either, but that's not a problem."

"Huh." Daisuke stuck his hands back in his pockets, trying to ignore the wind, which seemed to be getting colder by the minute. He was wishing that he'd brought a change of clothes, or at least a jacket; he hadn't been planning on playing soccer and getting all sweaty, or staying out all night. "Well, he's happy enough."

"Yeah," agreed Wormmon, but he didn't sound very pleased.

Daisuke flashed Wormmon a reassuring smile. "I'm sure he's okay. Isn't this better than him trying to kill himself?"

"... I suppose."

There was no supposing in Daisuke's mind. Ken as a happy, lively person was infinitely preferable to Ken as a depressed, suicidal person. Ever since he'd been drafted to save the world, he'd logged up quite a few experiences that, viewed in hindsight, he really could have done without. Talking Ken down had definitely ranked up there.

"Digimon worry too much," said Daisuke, settling himself against the wall and wondering how much longer Ken was going to be.

It turned out to be only a few more minutes before Ken slipped out of the sushi bar, carrying a bag in which several small boxes were stacked. "Come on, let's get out of this crowd. I can't believe I had to sign autographs just to buy dinner. They almost didn't let me get anything at all. Don't you think sometimes that it would be neat to, I don't know the word to use, come out of the closet so to speak, and not have to hide your Digimon anymore? Then when people act like you don't exist because you're a kid, you can Digivolve Chibimon and _really_ get their attention."

"You can't be serious." Daisuke inserted this while Ken paused to take a breath, and followed amiably along behind him, carrying Ken's duffel bag now. They were headed back toward the park, in the general direction of Daisuke's home.

"No, I'm really not, but it'd be cool, wouldn't it? And I wouldn't have to walk everywhere or take the train or the bus or whatever either. I could just ride Stingmon. I could be to your place in just a few minutes, it'd be almost as good as you having a computer I could use."

"I'm not a taxi!" came Wormmon's soft protest. "Get a bicycle!"

Ken laughed, and so did Daisuke. Then Daisuke wondered, "What would you want to come over to my house for? There's nothing there except Jun most of the time. I'm sure she'd love you, though, and want you to sign her shirt."

"Well, _you're_ there," said Ken, and he gave Daisuke a wink. "What more reason would I need? I could teach you all of my patented secrets to beating video games and then distract you while you try to implement them." Ken's hand went up to the nape of Daisuke's neck and lightly brushed across the fine hairs there. A deep shiver clutched Daisuke's spine. "I could teach you some other things, too. I've been doing research."

Daisuke liked Ken's teasing touch. In fact, he liked it altogether too much for being in a public locale, so he sidestepped and ducked to escape it. "Can we, um, not talk about this here?"

"Are you embarrassed? I believe you are!" Sounding delighted, Ken nevertheless backed off a little. "And here I was beginning to think that it was impossible to embarrass you. Who was it who kissed me right in front of a restaurant? Hmm, let me think, could it have been one Motomiya Daisuke?"

"That doesn't count, I was desperate."

"Uh huh," said Ken, grinning knowingly, then his attention shifted and he pointed ahead. "Look at that!"

Daisuke looked and saw nothing special. "Look at what?" he asked, but Ken was already dashing off into the darkened park. Daisuke took off after him.

There was a small playground near the fringe of the park, where the very young children usually played under their mothers' eyes. It was forlorn and silent now, after dark; at least, it was until Ken hit the miniature merry-go-round running, leaping onto it and letting his momentum set it spinning. Throwing his head back and clinging to one of the metal bars, he laughed as the contraption squeaked its way around a slow revolution.

Once he was back within easy earshot, Daisuke called, "Ken, how old are you again?"

Grinning, Ken held up four fingers and said, "This many!"

"I believe you." Daisuke reached the merry-go-round and stopped it with his hand before sitting down on the edge. "Why can't you be like this all the time?"

"I don't know." Ken dropped the bag of sushi and climbed up onto one of the bars, balancing there a moment before slowly standing up. "It'd be cool if I was, wouldn't it? I'd get so much done! Of course, I'm not getting that much done right now, but that's fine, I'd rather be with you than working on homework or something. Although that game I'm writing is going to be so amazing. You are going to help me out with it, right?"

While Chibimon and Wormmon came to help Daisuke investigate the sushi, Daisuke said, "Sure, I said I would." He peered at the kanji written on the sides of the boxes by someone with terrible handwriting. "You did not seriously get sea urchin."

"I did! It's good, you should try it, but if you really don't want it, I'll take it."

"You can have it. I wouldn't step in something like that, much less eat it. What else did you get?"

"Let me try some!" said Chibimon, claiming the box with the sea urchin in it.

"No way," said Daisuke, claiming it right back. "You are what you eat, and I don't want you turning into something disgusting. Here, you can have the yellowtail, let Ken eat the yucky stuff."

"Aww!" complained the little blue Digimon. "Let me try just one bite!"

"Yeah, and next time you Digivolve, you'll become Slimemon or something." Daisuke tickled Chibimon's tummy. The floor of the merry-go-round shook as Ken jumped down from the metal bar and snagged the abandoned box.

"Where's your sense of adventure?" said Ken, bouncing down to sit on the edge beside Daisuke. He began riffling through the boxes and handed one to Wormmon before digging into the otherwise unwanted kelp boats of sea urchin sushi, eating very indelicately with his fingers and not bothering with any of the various little side items that had been packed in with it.

"I left it at home this morning." That was all that needed to be said for awhile, until Ken, having inhaled the sea urchin in a manner that would have made any young Digimon proud and would have offended any sushi chef, stood up and leaped up atop a swing. Standing on the seat, he swung back and forth for a little while in silence.

Then : "Hey, Daisuke?"

"Hmm?" Daisuke's mouth was full. He didn't usually consider himself a slow eater, but anybody would look slow compared to Chibimon, and Ken made Chibimon look leisurely.

"Do you think I'm an evil person?"

Frowning and dusting off his hands, Daisuke swallowed and said, "Of course not."

Ken eyed him strangely, although it was really too dark under the distant glare of artificial lights for Daisuke to see him well. "Why not?" Crouching, Ken slowly kicked his leg, causing the swing to twist around until he was wrapped up in the chains.

"You just aren't. I shouldn't have to explain that."

Having twisted up, the swing began to untwist and then twist again in the other direction, whirling Ken around in a circle. "If Iori hadn't been so adamant about it, I would have tried deleting Arukenimon. I still think we should have just done it. I'd be willing to do it all by myself if I had to, to keep your hands clean." Suddenly dropping into the seat and stopping the twisting motion, Ken leveled a perfectly calm look at Daisuke. "Don't you think that means I'm evil?"

Not sure what to say, Daisuke just stared back at Ken. _Was_ that an evil thing to think? Daisuke wasn't sure. On the one hand, killing Digimon, even nasty ones, wasn't the act of a peaceful person. On the other, there was a certain grim practicality in it; surely even Iori would have to admit that tons of trouble would have been saved if they'd just gone all the way and deleted Arukenimon when they'd had the chance. And, it was looking now like they might have been able to save the Digiworld in advance that way. Was it evil to kill someone who would destroy an entire world?

And was it evil for Ken to have offered to take the blood of one more Digimon onto his hands, to spare the rest of them?

Before Daisuke could wrest these thoughts into something coherent that he could actually say, Ken visibly lost interest and said, "I hate studying for history. I've got a history exam tomorrow and I haven't studied at all because history bores me. It's just memorizing stuff, and that's dull, I'd rather solve problems. I bet you're the same way, aren't you?"

"Huh?" Still caught up in the question of evil, Daisuke had trouble switching gears to the new subject.

"Thought so," said Ken, undeterred by this indeterminate answer. "Well, I've kept you out long enough. I bet I've tired you out." He laughed a little, and Daisuke could hear no hint of bitterness in the sound. The lack made Ken's laugh beautiful. "Want me to walk you home?"

"Nah," said Daisuke, shoving the disquieting thoughts aside. "Will you be okay, it's a longer way to your house."

"With Wormmon with me? Of course!" Ken pounced on his Digimon and gave him a hug before tucking him back into the duffel bag. "You going to be in the digital world this weekend?" Without waiting for an answer, Ken hefted his bag and said, "I'll see you then, okay?" He gave Daisuke a kiss on the cheek and was skipping off before Daisuke's brain caught up with events.

"Bye," said Daisuke, although Ken was probably too far away to hear. He looked down at Chibimon, who looked as baffled as he felt. "What just happened here?"

"I don't know," said Chibimon. "At least he's happy!"

"Mmm," said Daisuke. "Good point."

Without Ken nearby, the wind seemed to have grown teeth, and Daisuke shivered. He quickly gathered up his Digimon and his things and hurried toward home, his disquiet soothed by the comforting idea that Ken really _did_ seem happy.


End file.
